Andrzej Poczobut, a journalist and activist of the Polish minority in Belarus, was arrested four years ago and sentenced to eight years in 2023 for allegedly "inciting hatred". On the 4th anniversary of the journalist's arrest, the largest Polish media are reminding us of him.
Andrzej Poczobut in 2013 (Source: Wikipedia)
Ruslan Shoshin reports in "Rzeczpospolita" about his last conversation with Andrzej's wife – Oksana Poczobut.
The woman says that she learns little from her husband's letters. Andrzej writes to her, for example, about how many push-ups he does every day. He also complains about the lack of access to new books and that the prison library's assortment condemns him to reading classics of Russian literature.
The author of the text in "Rzeczpospolita" also reminds us of the unfortunately unsuccessful attempts to free Andrzej Poczobut undertaken over the past four years by the authorities of the Republic of Poland. The journalist also quotes the president of the Union of Poles in Belarus, Andżelika Borys, according to whom the only chance for Andrzej's release is for the Polish authorities to start a dialogue with Alexander Lukashenko.
Andrzej Poczobut's last text, published exactly four years ago, on the day the journalist was arrested in Grodno, is mentioned in today's Gazeta Wyborcza by its deputy editor-in-chief Bartosz Wieliński.
According to Wieliński, the text he published on the day of Andrzej's arrest was
in fact, a manifesto to the Polish authorities of the time, not to make any concessions to Lukashenko, because the Belarusian dictator hates Poland. And he will deceive it, just as he deceived it in 2016, when Polish politicians: Deputy Prime Minister (later head of government) Mateusz Morawiecki, Minister of Foreign Affairs Witold Waszczykowski, Marshal of the Senate Stanisław Karczewski flew to Minsk to persuade the Belarusian ruler (they called him a "warm man") to break with Russia.
On the fourth anniversary of the arrest of Andrzej Poczobut, the largest Polish media outlet – the Polish Press Agency (PAP) – also writes about him.
PAP recalls, among other things, that after the verdict was announced in 2023, sentencing Andrzej to eight years in a penal colony, Poland closed the border crossing with Belarus in Bobrowniki, stating directly that it would open it after the authorities in Minsk abandoned the political persecution of Poczobut.
Andrzej Poczobut Freedom, poster of the Belarusian House in Warsaw (Source: znadniemna.pl)
For its part, the agency emphasizes that "Lukashenka made it clear that he treated Poczobut as a political bargaining chip, for example by publicly saying that he could be exchanged for Belarusian opposition activists who fled the country to escape his revenge."
PAP also quotes the words of the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland, Paweł Wroński, who told the agency that Poland had repeatedly spoken to the Belarusian authorities about Poczobut.
I think everyone in Poland knows what Lukashenko should do: simply release an innocent man from prison.
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman was to say.
As colleagues of Andrzej Poczobut, who have been cooperating with him for many years in creating Polish-language media in Belarus, two years ago the ZnadNiemna.pl portal presented an exhibition about him in the Sejm of the Republic of Poland entitled "Persecuted for POLISHNESS".
Two years after its presentation in the Sejm of the Republic of Poland, this exhibition has not lost any of its relevance and is still available (also for downloading and further distribution) on the website of the Freedom and Democracy Foundation: CLICK HERE.
