BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

29 July 2005

Journalists arrested amid tension with Poland Title

Reporters Without Borders today urged the Belarusian authorities to stop hounding and arresting journalists from the country's Polish minority as part of the government's present conflict with neighbouring Poland.

Andrei Pochobut, editor of the Polish-language magazine Magazyn Polski, was given a 15-day prison sentence on 27 July for "taking part in an illegal demonstration" in the western town of Shchuchin on 3 July and for "civil disobedience" in protest against the government taking control of the Union of Poles in Belarus.

Three Polish journalists who had come to attend his trial before the Lida court were arrested the same day. Ten Belarusian and Polish journalists were also arrested by special police at the union's Grodno office but released two hours later.

"These journalists must not be made to pay for the tension between the two countries," the worldwide press freedom organisation said. "We fear that Pochobut's conviction is a warning to journalists fighting to defend the country's Polish minority." It called on Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to see the journalists still being held were freed at once.

Pochobut and two members of the union, Josef Pazhetski and Mieczyslau Jaskiewicz, were arrested on 26 July as they were driving in Shchuchin, taken to a police station for questioning and tried the next day. Pazhetski and Jaskiewicz were sentenced to 10 days in prison. Pochobut was fined in early July for joining a protest against the distribution of bogus copies of the Polish paper Glos Znad Niemna.

Waclaw Radziwinowicz and Robert Kowalewski, reporters for Poland's biggest daily paper, Gazeta Wyborcza, were briefly arrested on their way to the trial. Agnieszka Romaszewska, of the Polish TV station TVP1, was also arrested on arrival in Shchuchin by police who said she did not have foreign ministry accreditation. She is still being held.

Special police units seized control of the union offices in Grodno late on 27 July and 10 Belarusian and Polish journalists inside, working for Gazeta Wyborcza, Associated Press, Glos Znad Niemna, Nasha Niva, Pressbol and the website www.pahonia.promedia.by, were arrested and taken to a police station before being freed two hours later without being charged.

The arrests came as tensions rose between Poland and Belarus. Lukashenko has accused the United States of fomenting revolution in Belarus, helped by Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine. Belarus and Poland have expelled three of the other's diplomats and Poland recalled its ambassador in Belarus on 28 July and called for help from the European Union.

Source:

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14553

http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/68290/

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