The proposal

On December 11, when the president of Belarus was giving his talk in Geneva at the World Summit on Information society, which is meant to promote this kind of society, Belarus was discussing the KGB chairperson Leanid Eryn’s proposal on controlling the Internet. The proposal was made on December 10, the day when the Human Rights Declaration was adopted. “Special forces should control the Internet, which is more often used by international terrorists and organized criminals now. We try to provide all conditions, first of all legal ones, to control the Internet,” said Eryn. It should be mentioned that Eryn made his “confession” in response to deputy Vasil Khrol’s request to close the Civil Initiative “Charter`97” web page. There were Khrol’s phone numbers posted for people to express their protest against his proposal to introduce a value added tax on cellular phones. According to “Charter`97” press secretary Aleh Bebenin, the site did not provide Khrol’s numbers; it was the readers who posted them on free forums. “All the information is official publications from press and information agencies’ reports. The phones were posted on free-access forums and not exclusively on ours. But the claims are put against us only,” says Bebenin.