Poland’s government has repeated its call for the release of two prominent figures from the Polish community in Belarus, whose five-month detention has been extended by a further three. It also appealed for human rights groups to intervene.
Andrzej Poczobut, a journalist, and Andżelika Borys, the head of the Union of Poles in Belarus (ZPB), were locked up earlier this year after being accused of crimes including inciting hatred and rehabilitation of Nazism. Their arrests came as part of a wider clampdown on Belarus’s large ethnic Polish community.
On Thursday, deputy foreign minister Marcin Przydacz condemned the extension of their detention and called for the pair’s release. He urged human rights organisations to “strengthen their pressure on Minsk”.
Areszt dla A. Poczobuta został przedłużony o kolejne miesiące. To decyzja, którą należy potępić z całą stanowczością. A. Poczobut i A. Borys oraz inni więźniowie polityczni powinni zostać uwolnieni. Instytucje zajmujące się prawami człowieka powinny wzmocnić swój nacisk na Mińsk.
— Marcin Przydacz (@marcin_przydacz) August 25, 2021
Borys was arrested in March along with two other ZPB leaders, Irina Biernacka and Maria Tiszkowska, as well as Poczobut. The four were initially held at the Valadarka jail in Minsk, but in May were reportedly moved to a detention centre in Zhodzina, outside the capital.
Their five-month detention has now been extended for a further three, according to the Rzeczpospolita daily, although no officials charges have yet been filed. Concerns have mounted about the state of the detainees. In May, Poczobut’s wife, Oksana, detailed how letters had stopped arriving from him.
Rzeczpospolita reports today that Borys and Poczobut are being offered their freedom if they “plead guilty and write a letter to the president asking for a pardon”, according to Yuri Voskresensky, a political prisoner who has become head of the Round Table of Democratic Forces, an organisation supported by the Belarusian government.
According to Voskresensky, 100 of around 600 political prisoners have accepted such an offer but the Poles have remained defiant. “Andżelika Borys and Andrzej Poczobut are the only prisoners whom we approached for the second time a few days ago,” he said.
Asking for a pardon would not only mean admitting to the charges – which their fellow community activists have say are fabricated – but also recognising President Alexander Lukashenko as the rightful leader of the country.
The Poles were reportedly in May offered release in exchange for being deported from Belarus but declined the offer. Some other detained members of the Polish community were released from custody following the intervention of the Polish government.
In Poland, protests have been taking place against the persecution of members of the Polish minority. At one demonstration in the city of Sopot on Wednesday, Biernacka, one of the released prisoners, took part, reports naszemiasto.pl.
“I went to church, taught children Polish, took care of monuments, and for all this, I was arrested,” said Biernacka at the event. “We did not understand why we were facing such allegations. We were detained [in a place] where political prisoners were not given food or mattresses…[where] people are treated like animals.”
The ZPB is the largest organisation representing Belarus’s Polish community, who according to official data number around 300,000 (3% of the population). Unofficial estimates put the figure higher. Its statutory goals include promoting Polish culture and language as well as tending to Polish memorial sites.
The association was officially delisted by the Belarusian 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 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 of between five and 12 years.
Relations between Poland and Belarus have deteriorated significantly over the last year amid the Polish government’s overt support for the Belarusian democratic opposition led by Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. Poland has offered refuge to activists, businesses and students fleeing the Minsk regime.
Having previously condemned Poland, and accused it of wanting to annex former Polish lands from Belarus, Lukashenko changed his tone at a rare press conference earlier this month. He said that his country needed to find a “common language” with Poland.
In recent weeks the two governments also been locked in conflict over a surge in migrants illegally crossing the border from Belarus to Poland. Warsaw, with support from the EU, says that Lukashenko is deliberately facilitating the passage of the migrants in an effort to undermine neighbouring countries.
Main image credit: Bartosz Banka / Agencja Gazeta
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.
