LUKASHENKO STEPS UP OFFENSIVE AGAINST MEDIA.

Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko last week took another step in his campaign to stifle what remains of the independent media in Belarus. In a presidential directive devoted to "state information policies," Lukashenko ordered a series of measures to strengthen his office’s political oversight of the media and to force the re-registration of all periodicals. The directive creates three new bodies: a vaguely defined "external group of social-political commentators," a body where Lukashenko supporters will likely be empowered to mold public opinion; a "Bureau for the Informational Safeguarding of Instructional and Socio-Political Propaganda" that will function out of the Institute for Information and Prognoses, a body already controlled by Lukashenko; and a group of political commentators within the national state television and radio company.

Creation of these new structures follows last year’s re-establishment of Soviet-style political information offices at workplaces. However, the requirement that periodicals reregister by March 1 with the State Committee on the Press — and not, as in the past, with the Ministry of Culture and the Press — appears to pose a more immediate threat to the media. The measure is widely expected to be used to deny registration to the handful of independent Belarusian newspapers that remain. (13)

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