Narodnaya Volia chief editor announces resignation

“I will turn 75 in a cou­ple of months. Like it or not, your age and health make you stop the heavy dai­ly work. The cir­cum­stances also do not favor vig­or­ous activ­i­ty,” Iosif Siaredzich wrote.

He remem­bers the chal­lenges that the pub­lish­ing team of one of the old­est inde­pen­dent news­pa­pers had to over­come.

“You, the loy­al back­ers of Nar­o­d­naya Volia, are well aware of the dis­grace­ful tac­tics employed by cer­tain fac­tions to divide us. Ini­tial­ly, they declined print­ing ser­vices and, recent­ly, they revoked the reg­is­tra­tion cer­tifi­cate of the news­pa­per. Notably, the news­pa­per had not received any warn­ings from the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion, the Gen­er­al Prosecutor’s Office, or the Pres­i­den­tial Admin­is­tra­tion for over a decade.”

These sad lines touch the hearts of read­ers, jour­nal­ists, and speak­ers. Nar­o­d­naya Volia has been a sym­bol of the free press in Belarus for many years. It appeared to with­stand the test of time and gov­ern­ment oppres­sion. Yet, the news­pa­per faced issues with print­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion, fol­lowed by attacks on the web­site.

Iosif Siaredzich sum­ma­rizes that the pub­li­ca­tion, which was a mod­el for all Belaru­sian media, was destroyed with­out rea­son.

The for­mer edi­tor-in-chief empha­sizes in his farewell let­ter:

“We at Nar­o­d­naya Volia have not betrayed our integri­ty, free­dom of speech, or our moth­er­land! We will con­tin­ue to remain the same!”

The leg­endary Belaru­sian jour­nal­ist thanks his read­ers and promis­es to stay con­nect­ed to them, but is leav­ing the edi­to­r­i­al office.

What will become of Nar­o­d­naya Volia which now oper­ates as an online media? Iosif Siaredzich offi­cial­ly trans­ferred the own­er­ship rights for the web­site nv-online.info to anoth­er indi­vid­ual, whose name was not spec­i­fied.

He assures that the dig­i­tal plat­form will remain the source of truth­ful infor­ma­tion for Belaru­sians.

Iosif Siaredzich has been in charge of Nar­o­d­naya Volia news­pa­per for 28 years, ever since it start­ed in July 1995. In his good­bye mes­sage, he described him­self as a jour­nal­ist who has spent 56 years in this pro­fes­sion.

Thank you, Mr. Siaredzich! Your work was use­ful, infor­ma­tive, and inter­est­ing!

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