Photojournalists awarded compensation for treatment by Polish soldiers at Belarus border

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

A Polish court has awarded compensation to two photojournalists working for major international media outlets due to the brutal treatment they received from soldiers who detained them while they were reporting on the migration crisis at the Belarus border.

The case dates back to 2021, when Belarus began encouraging and assisting tens of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers – mostly from the Middle East, Asia and Africa – to cross into Poland and other neighbouring EU countries.

Amid global media attention, three photojournalists – Maciej Moskwa (a collaborator of US agency Getty Images), Maciej Nabrdalik (who works with The New York Times) and Martin Divíšek (of the EPA agency) – were among those sent to report on the crisis.

The trio had planned to take photographs of a Polish army camp a few kilometres from the border, but before doing so they approached the gate, introduced themselves, and warned that they would be taking pictures, reports Poland’s Press magazine.

However, soon after, the soldiers blocked their way, dragged the journalists out of their car, handcuffed them, stripped them of their jackets, and then held them locked up for an hour.

During the incident, which was recorded on a dictaphone by one of the photojournalists, the soldiers behaved aggressively, used vulgar language, and looked at the photos that had been taken by the trio.

Before the journalists published the recording of the incident, Poland’s defence ministry and the army had denied their account of how the incident unfolded, notes Press. Subsequently, prosecutors refused to launch an investigation.

However, Moskwa and Nabrdalik, who are both Polish, decided instead to submit a so-called subsidiary indictment – a legal avenue allowing one to bring a matter to court if prosecutors do not initiate proceedings – against the 15th Giżycko Mechanized Brigade, the unit from which the soldiers came.

Their case was supported by lawyers from the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (HFPC), a Warsaw-based Polish NGO.

Last year, a first-instance court awarded the pair 15,000 zloty (€3,600) in compensation each. But the decision was appealed by both the plaintiffs, who had demanded 25,000 zloty each in compensation, and the military unit, which wanted the amount reduced or the claim to be dismissed entirely.

On Monday this week, the court of appeal in the city of Białystok issued a final ruling in the case, awarding the men 10,000 zloty each in compensation.

This was “clearly an unjustified detention”, said judge Grzegorz Skrodzki in his justification, quoted by Radio Białystok. Although asking to check the journalists’ identity papers and asking them to get out of their vehicle was justified, “did they have to insult them later and treat them as potential criminals? No”, said the judge.

Skrodzki also criticised the soldiers for taking away the journalists’ jackets, for looking through their photographs, and for warning that their “finger might slip” on the trigger of their gun. “This is not how a Polish soldier behaves,” said the judge.

Representatives of the military unit had argued that the soldiers could have mistaken the journalists for spies. But the judge noted that they were taking pictures openly and in public, and that there was no ban on taking photographs there.

One of the reporters, Moskwa, expressed gratitude that their court battle was over.

But he criticised the amount awarded to him, saying that over the last four years he has “spent a fortune on psychological help, trips to the court in Białystok and accommodation there”. He also claimed to have lost work because of being branded “problematic”.

Both Moswka and Nabrdalik pointed out that the soldiers who carried out their detention have not suffered any consequences so far, and even received praise from the then defence minister, Mariusz Błaszczak. The press officer of the 15th Giżycko Mechanized Brigade did not comment on the ruling.

Artur Kula, a lawyer who represented the journalists in the case, said that the incident in question “is not even a fraction of what is happening at the border”, where “the army, the border guard and the police abuse their position”.

Both the former Law and Justice (PiS) government, which was in power until December 2023, and the current ruling coalition, led by Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform (PO), have taken tough measures in response to the security and migration crisis at the border.

Those have included introducing exclusion zones along the border to prevent people, including journalists and NGOs, from entering the area, as well as building physical and electronic barriers along the frontier.

A number of Polish court rulings have also found the Polish border guards’ practice of “pushing back” asylum seekers over the border, rather than allowing them to submit their claims, to be unlawful.

In its latest move, Poland’s government introduced a law allowing it to temporarily suspend the right to submit asylum claims, a measure that it then immediately introduced along the Belarus border.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: KPRM/Flickr (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Agata Pyka

Agata Pyka is an assistant editor at Notes from Poland. She is a journalist and a political communication student at the University of Amsterdam. She specialises in Polish and European politics as well as investigative journalism and has previously written for Euractiv and The European Correspondent.