Sasha Ramanova: We love our country

Due to the suppression of the website kuku.org took a number of steps to correct the situation; however, it is going to stick to its principles.

Let us recall that last Thursday it became known that the Ministry of Information, referring to the law “On mass media”, limited access to the information resource kuku.org. It was done “due to placement of information, distribution of which can hurt national interests of the Republic of Belarus (subparagraph 1.3 of the article 38 of Law on Mass Media)”.

According to the officials, “in a number of publications on the informational resource, there are derogatory statements concerning the state holiday of the Republic of Belarus – Victory Day, citizens of the country who participate in it, significance of the event in the history of the country is disputed, by which historic truth about the Great Patriotic War is distorted. Also the materials on the website kyky.org contain tabooed lexicon, squeamish, sometimes disgracing statements regarding representatives of certain social groups, nationalities and religious confessions.”

“EuroBelarus” Information Service asked Sasha Ramanava, editor-in-chief of kuku.org to comment on the situation:

- What’s your attitude towards the actions of the Ministry of Information and how are you going to get out of this situation?

- These actions are, certainly, unfair. But we have already started taking steps to get out of this situation. First, we created a mirror of our website – kuku.io; secondly, we deleted the four publications which the Ministry of Information has complaints against. Why have we done that? Because we are living in Belarus and adhere to its laws; i.e. we have to do it if we want kuku.org to be opened again.

- Will the editorial policy be somehow changing because of what has happened?

- We are not thinking about changing editorial policy now; we are thinking about different things. We want the website to be opened for us and we want to be allowed to do what we do. In general, we are not censuring ourselves; we publish different opinions. I.e. editorial policy is not our primary task at the given moment. While the website is blocked, we have to resolve one problem without distracting ourselves and update our website in order not to lose our audience.

- When, do you think, the suppression of the website can be lifted?

- I think that we have a month to get rid of violations, although I can’t say precisely. Basically, we have already corrected our work: we deleted the articles and marked why they are deleted. Then we will probably have to appeal to the Ministry of Information and wait for the decision from it.

- Is there a possibility that you will go to court if one-month suppression continues?

- Well, this is a different kind of action. We still expect that we will be opened without any legal battles. We assume that there are kind people around us that will go to meet us. Nothing awful is happening and the problem can be solved.

- Can we hope that kuku.org won’t change much because of the incident and its readers won’t lose anything in the future?

- Well, we are sometimes forceful, sometimes provocative, but we have never done anything that we are accused of – infringement of national interests and leveling of patriotism. We love our country; we write about it, we find characters that inspire us. We are, in generally, good. I can’t understand how this situation happened. Or, rather, I understand but I don’t think that we should change into a public bulletin board so that such situations do not happen again. I certainly don’t think that we have been doing something malicious every day.

- Thus, kuku.org won’t change itself, will it?

- Kuku.org can’t fail itself.