Protests against harassment of Polish journalists in Belarus

In a letter to Belarus´ President Lukashenko sent today, the Norwegian Union of Journalists (NJ), the Human Rights House Foundation (HRH) and Norwegian PEN express grave concern over recent crackdown on free expression in general, and the harassment of Polish-speaking journalists in Belarus. (25-AUG-05)

According to information from the International Press Institute (IPI), several Polish and Belarusian journalists of Polish descent were recently harassed and detained in the Belarusian cities of Schuchin and Grodno.

– We are alarmed at the increased harassment of journalists and media outlets in Belarus, in particular those working for the Polish minority press and we strongly condemn this latest crackdown on local and foreign journalists working in your country. We urge the authorities to ensure everyone´s right “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” as stated in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights,” the letter from the Norwegian NGOs reads.

– We condemn the authorities´ attempts to worsen the relationship between the Belarusian and the Polish people. We appeal to the Committee for Religious and National Questions to respect the freedom of association and ensure that the Association of Belarusian Poles is free to operate without restrictions, the letter continues. They are particularly concerned about the following incidents:

· On 1 August, Belarusian police arrested Andrzej Pisalnik, editor-in-chief of
Glos znad Niemna, a Polish minority newspaper based in Belarus and a
contributor to the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita in Schuchin.

· On 6 July, Pisalnik and several of his colleagues from Glos znad Niemna, as
well as Andrzej Poczobut, editor-in-chief of Magazyn Polski, and Ivan Roman,
a reporter for the Solidarnost newspaper, were arrested by police in Grodno, while they were protesting in the city centre against the harassment of their newspapers.

· On 27 July, special police officers and plainclothes policemen entered the
SPB headquarters and detained many of the journalists present in the offices at the time. Among them were Pisalnik, Inesa Todryk, a reporter for Glosznad Niemna, Waclaw Radziwinowicz and Robert Kowalewski, journalists for Gazeta Wyborcza, Pavel Mazheika, the head of the Grodno office of the BAJ, and Siarhey Hryts, a photographer for the Associated Press (AP).

· On 27 July, Schuchin police detained Agnieszka Romaszewska, a Polish
journalist for the television channel TVP1, near the “Polish House” in Schuchin, where a conference of the outgoing members of the SPB was beingheld at the time. Reportedly, she did not have the necessary accreditation from the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

· On 27. July 2005, Andrei Pochobut, editor-in-chief of the Polish-language magazine “Magazyn Polski”, was given a 15-day prison sentence for “taking part in an illegal demonstration” in the western town of Shchuchin on 3 July and for “civil disobedience” in protesting the government´s taking control of the Union of Poles in Belarus.

· On 6. August 2005 The expulsion of Adam Tuchlinksi, 25, of the weekly news magazine Przekroj. Tuchlinksi is a Polish photojournalist who was expelled from Belarus and banned from the country for five years.

· On 11. August 2005 beating of Pawel Reszka, Moscow correspondent for the Polish daily “Rzeczpospolita”.

· On 16. August 2005 raids were carried out by the Belarusian secret police (KGB) in Minsk and the western city of Grodno. The KGB raided the apartments of three young members of the Third Way opposition movement who reportedly create satirical, animated cartoons for Internet distribution. The KGB confiscated at least 12 computers and other equipment used to produce the cartoons and interrogated three Third Way members.

On 25. Augusr 2005 Andrzej Pochobut and Andzej Pisalnik were named suspected in a criminal case under a seemingly far-fetched pretext.

The Norwegian NGOs urge the Belarusian authorities to:
– give Polish journalists and diplomats permission to enter Belarus
– recognise the election of the new leader of the Association of Belarusian Poles 
Angelika Borys, who was elected chairwoman of the Polish Association in March 2005
– respect freedom of expression and stop hounding and arresting journalists from Belarus´s Polish minority as part of  your present conflict with neighbouring Poland.

Polish activists have also expressed their concern about the harassments in Belarus. On 28 July, a letter regarding the situation of the Association of Poles in Belarus was sent from the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in Poland to the International Helsinki Federation. On the evening of Wednesday the 27 July, the police and the Belarus security service forced their way into the headquarters of the Association of Poles in Grodno and escorted out over a dozen activists, including Chairwoman Andzelika Borys, Belarusian journalists  and two journalists of the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza.