Naša Niva
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Naša Niva (Наша Ніва, Nasha Niva) is one of the oldest Belarusian weekly newspaper founded in 1906 and re-established in 1991.
The current editor-in-chief is Andrej Dyńko.
The newspaper was founded in 1906 by members of the Belarusian Socialist Union (Hramada in Vilnia (modern Vilnius) that was a centre of the Belarusian national movement at that time.
"Naša Niva" was among the first newspapers in Belarusian language, it published news about Belarus and literary works by Belarusian authors. The newspaper faced harsh censorship by Russian occupational administration for promoting ideas of the independence of Belarus.
In 1915 the newspaper was closed down because of the World War I.
During the Soviet rule "Naša Niva" was claimed to be “counter-revolutionary” and “capitalist” despite the fact that its founders and authors were mostly adherents of socialism.
In 1991 the newspaper was re-established in Vilnius by the editor-in-chief Siarhiej Dubaviec.
Under the presidency of Alexander Lukashenko the newspaper was subjected under state pressure and at one point, in the late 1990s there was an attempt to close down the newspaper, because of it using a version of Belarusian orthography that went against the version adopted by the state, which dates to the reform of 1933 that has been criticised as a from of Russification by some political groups, in any case Nasha Niva remains a paper that publishes exclusively in Belarusian language.
In October 2003, a former Czech President Václav Havel granted the cash portion of the Ellenbogen Citizenship Award he received to "Nasha Niva" editor Andrey Dynko. The Ellenbogen Award is given each year to an individual who has dedicated his or her life to public service with the stipulation that the financial portion of the award be passed to a gifted young person. "I pass this award to Mr. Dynko because we, who have benefited so much from international solidarity, must show solidarity ourselves," Havel said at the award ceremony in Prague. "'Nasha Niva' in Belarus is a symbol of independence on the one hand and an island of freedom on the other."
Since 2006 "Naša Niva" was expelled from the media subscription system of Belarus (controlled by the state monopolist "Belposhta") and is now distributed by enthusiasts.
In April 2006 ideology administration of Minsk executive committee ordered "Naša Niva" to be closed down. The staff members sent letters of appeals to Lithuania to apply to UNESCO for including the newspaper into the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The newspaper is often held up as an example of the Lukashenko regimes intolerance for dissent.
