Paper squelched

Minsk

The Belarusian national postal service said this week it would no longer deliver the country’s most prominent opposition newspaper, Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta. The national press retailer, which operates nearly all of the country’s newspaper kiosks, also said it would no longer stock the paper. The state services gave no reason for their actions. Belarus, a former Soviet republic, is still run as a communist dictatorship, and there is no system of private newspaper carriers. “This is a planned blow to kill the newspaper,” said publisher Pyotr Martsau. He blamed President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has shut down most of the rest of the country’s independent press and outlawed most opposition parties.

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