Hrodna to Be Twinned with Nur-Sultan — Hrodna.life Threatened Litigation for April Fools’ Joke

The web­site pub­lished a humor­ous news piece Hrod­na to Be Twinned with Nur-Sul­tan, and Nazarbayev’s stat­ue is to replace Cha­payev.

The web­site chief edi­tor Ali­ak­sei Shota was sur­prised with the reac­tion of local ide­ol­o­gists:

«We joked that Hrod­na res­i­dents will give Kaza­khstan a stat­ue of Vik­tar Liaskovich. This is deputy chair­man of the Hrod­na region exec­u­tive com­mit­tee, quite an impor­tant per­son in Hrod­na. I thought he had a pret­ty good sense of humor. How­ev­er, an hour after the news appeared on the web­site, we received a call from the depart­ment of ide­ol­o­gy of the region­al exec­u­tive com­mit­tee with the request to remove the news. They say, there would be some con­se­quences, like they would sue us in court,» — the Hrodna.life chief edi­tor told BAJ.

Ali­ak­sei Shota says the arti­cle was a harm­less joke. He believes, if the case is tak­en to court, it would be one of the most absurd tri­als.

Hrodna.life had already been sued for its arti­cles in 2017, by a munic­i­pal uni­tary enter­prise Hrod­naablvideaprakat, and won the court case.