Articles of the Former President of the National Bar are Removed

Monitoring of some Belarusian state media websites ("SB: Belarus Today" and "Mlyn") has revealed that articles of the former president of the Belarusian Republican Bar Association (BRBA) Viktar Chaichyts were removed. The attempts to access these articles result in the message “Page Not Found”. However, the texts of the articles are available in the Webarchive service, which captures the information published on the Internet. These are such resonant articles as:

• “Some have placed political ambitions before the duty" – Chaichyts on the new “fashion” of incredible lawyers” (allusion to the common description of protesters as “incredible”) (address of the article written in Russian in Webarchive);
• “Chaichyts: sanctions constitute a flagrant interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states” (address of the article written in Russian in Webarchive);
• “The Constitution must keep up with the times” (address of the article written in Russian in Webarchive).

In these articles, the ex-president of the BRBA expressed words of support for the current regime, declaring “our state is for the people”, as well as stating that he had always “boldly expressed his pro-state and pro-presidential position”.
The reasons for the removal of these materials from the websites of state media are still unknown. We recall that some time ago, according to unofficial information, the decision to appoint an extraordinary recertification for Viktar Chaichyts coincided with the termination of his powers as the president of the BRBA. Mr. Chaichyts has refuted this information on his Facebook page.