The chief editor seems not to like the article on Naviny.by online newspaper. In Siarhiey Pulsha’s material, advisor to the Movement For Freedom (MFF)’s chairman Ales Lahviniec gives the following explanation of the regime’s reaction to the bold act of Swedes for the support of freedom and democracy in Belarus:
“Such a slap in the face as the flight of the Sweden plane is very painful for the authorities. Unable to reach the Swedes, they want to find guilty people inside the country. Evidently, the blame isn’t laid on the security agencies that missed the plane but on those who speak about this.”
Lahviniets thinks that the authorities reacted so angrily to the unauthorised flight of Swedes and dropping of teddy bears over Belarus, because this action has an ironic and mocking nature, and “irony and laughing is the most efficient tactics against such regimes”.
The regime, feeling itself helpless in this situation, intensifies repressions in impotent rage against the journalists who reported on this incident. Being very afraid to lose its prestige among people, the regime supports it with brute force and covert threat message: if you mock at our mistakes, you’ll get behind the bars.
Paval Yakubovich’s front page editorial column also attacks Ales Antsipienka, Andrey Suzdaltsau, Siarhiey Pulsha, and other independent journalists who reported on the “teddy landing force” situation. The chief editor of the main newspaper in the country seems to envy that he didn’t manage to react as a real journalist and didn’t provide the readers with the fullest information on the incident from different sources, but had to confine himself to the official statement of the Ministry of Defence that, in fact, turned out to be deceitful.
