Narodnaja Volya (newspaper)


Narodnaja Volya is an independent newspaper founded by Iosif Seredich and originally printed in Vilnius, Lithuania. Its circulation is 55,000. In November 1997, printing was moved to Minsk, Belarus in the private publishing house "Magic". It became Belarus' largest independent newspaper. Seredich served as the editor-in-chief, and the deputy chief editor was Viktor Svirko.

Libel suits

On June 18, 2002, a Belarus district court froze the Narodnaya Volya bank account because of defamation charges brought by two judges from Zhodzina. The judges sought 2.5 million rubles in damages.
On November 17, 2003, the Minsk City Court on 17 ordered Narodnaya Volya to pay 50 million Belarusian rubles in damages for libel against Yahor Rybakou, the chairman of the Belarusian State Television and Radio Company. The Court also ordered Narodnaya Volya journalist Maryna Koktysh and former television host Eleanora Yazerskaya to pay 3 million Belarusian rubles each to Rybakou.

Editorship of Svetlana Kalinkina

Following a campaign of government harassment against her previous paper, Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta, International Press Freedom Award laureate Svetlana Kalinkina accepted an editorial position at Narodnaja Volya in 2004. In October 2005, pressure from the Information Ministry prevented Belarusian printers from working with the paper, forcing Kalinkina to contract with a printer in Smolensk, Russia. Beginning on 1 January 2006, the Belarusian post office refused to distribute the paper, and an entire print run of 30,000 copies was confiscated by police on 9 January. When citizens of Salihorsk began a petition on the paper's behalf, police made visits to the homes of the signatories to interrogate them.
On 13 March 2006, a week before the presidential election that would usher in Lukashenko's third term, Narodnaja Volya, BDG, and Tovarishch had their print runs abruptly cancelled by their Smolensk supplier. Kalinkina told The New York Times that she believed Belarusian government pressure to be responsible, saying, "When, a week before the election, someone refuses to print three papers, it is clear there are political reasons."
In April 2010, computers were seized from Kalinkina and Koktysh, as well as Charter 97 editor Natalya Radina and Novaya Gazeta journalist Irina Khalip as part of an investigation into a slander case filed by Ivan Korzh. The four were also brought to a police station for questioning. In September, Kalinkina wrote an article investigating the recent suspicious death of Charter 97 editor-in-chief Aleh Byabenin, and received several death threats shortly after, prompting the human rights organization Norwegian Helsinki Committee to issue an alert on her behalf.
On 29 April 2011, the Information Ministry again attempted to shut down Narodnaja Volya, filing a motion with the Supreme Economic Court of Belarus for the newspaper's closure.

Criticism

In December 2017, Narodnaya Volya has been mentioned among several other Belarusian independent media that had allegedly removed old news stories about the 2015 arrest and ten months long imprisonment of the businessman Viktor Prokopenya from their websites. This was allegedly done after the media were approached by Prokopenya's public relations advisors. The situation has caused a wide discussion among Belarusian journalists and media professionals.