There is growing concern over four prominent figures from Belarus’s ethnic Polish minority, who were detained earlier this year on charges including inciting hatred.
The quartet have been transferred to a detention centre outside Minsk and the wife of one says that she no longer receives communication from him, reports Polskie Radio.
In March, Andżelika Borys, the head of the Union of Poles in Belarus (ZPB), was arrested on charges of inciting hatred and the rehabilitation of Nazism. That was followed by the detention of local ZPB branch heads Irina Biernacka and Maria Tiszkowska, as well as Polish-Belarusian journalist Andrzej Poczobut.
The four were initially held at the Valadarka jail in Minsk, but have now been moved to a detention centre in Zhodzina, outside the capital, according to Znadniemna.pl, the news site of the ZPB.
The outlet also cites a Facebook statement by Oksana Poczobut, the detained journalist’s wife, which details how in “recent weeks” letters have “stopped coming”. Earlier they had arrived “quickly” and “every day”, but then “suddenly, it was over”.
Poczobut also expressed concerns about her husband’s condition, noting that from his letters suggested it was “far from ideal”.
“He had not been given the legal codes necessary to prepare for the trial. They did not let through his letters in Polish to his son. My requests for a visit have been systematically refused by investigators,” she wrote.
Borys has reportedly been offered release in exchange for being deported from Belarus, which she has declined, according to Agnieszka Romaszewska, head of the Belsat, a Belarusian-language television channel run by Poland’s public broadcaster, TVP.
The Polish foreign ministry has previously warned that Poland could impose sanctions over the detention of the quartet, while the EU has also condemned their arrests.
Relations between the two neighbours have deteriorated over Poland’s overt support for the Belarusian democratic opposition led by Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, which has included offering refuge to activists, businesses and students fleeing the Minsk regime.
President Alexander Lukashenko has accused Warsaw of seeking to interfere in his country’s internal affairs and even of wanting to grab former Polish territory from Belarus. The Kremlin has also claimed that Poland is violating the “accepted norms of international law”.
I support the statement of @ArkadyRzegocki on repressions against Polish minority in Belarus. All people must be released. The aggressive rhetoric and finger-pointing of Lukashenka's regime against 🇵🇱 organizations aim at inciting hatred. #StandWithBelarushttps://t.co/JgrebcIL3r
— Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya (@Tsihanouskaya) April 13, 2021
The ZPB is the largest organisation representing Belarus’s Polish community, which accounts for 3% of the country’s population according to official figures (though other estimates suggest it is even larger). Its statutory goals include promoting Polish culture and language as well as tending to Polish memorial sites.
The association was officially delisted by the authorities in 2005. ZPB leaders have cast this as an attempt to subjugate its independent activities to the Lukashenko regime, and have continued unofficial operations.
Now, the four ZPB detainees face criminal proceedings over “deliberate actions aimed at inciting racial, national, religious or other social hostility” as well as “a series of illegal mass undertakings” honouring “anti-Soviet gangs operating during and after the Great Patriotic War”. These could carry prison sentences between five and 12 years.
Main image credit: Max Katz/Flickr (under CC BY-SA 2.0)
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
