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Foreign ministry: Poczobut is not “untouchable”

 

Amidst calls from Poland to release journalist Andrzej Poczobut, arrested on June 21 for allegedly defaming Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the Belarusian foreign ministry said in a statement Friday that Mr. Poczobut is not “untouchable” and that all citizens of Belarus are equal before the law.

“The vocabulary used by officials the Republic of Poland arouses bewilderment,” the statement says. “They openly suggest exerting pressure on the Belarusian side in connection with the detention of Poczobut and call on the entire EU to do so.”

“By the logic of the Polish side, the fact that Poczobut calls himself a journalist, is of Polish nationality and, in addition, was “appointed” by Warsaw to the post of chairman of the Main Council of the Union of Poles in Belarus, while another person actually holds this post, makes Poczobut ‘untouchable,’” the statement says.

The foreign ministry points out that Mr. Poczobut is a citizen of Belarus and “is in the legal environment determined by Belarusian laws like any other Belarusian citizen.”

“In Belarus, all citizens, regardless of their professional activities and nationality, are equal before the law,” the statement says. “Instead of attempts at exerting pressure on the Belarusian system of justice, their foreign initiators should recall the principle of supremacy of law, so often mentioned by our European partners, but with regard to Belarus, they are increasingly often guided by political expedience instead of this principle.”

The Belarusian ambassador to Warsaw, Viktar Haysyonak, was summoned to the Polish foreign ministry on Friday and handed a note of protest over the arrest of Mr. Poczobut, a Hrodna-based correspondent of the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza and chairman of the Main Council of the Warsaw-backed “unofficial” Union of Poles in Belarus.

The Polish foreign ministry noted that Mr. Poczobut is an independent journalist and one of the leaders of an organization representing the Polish minority in Belarus, and said that his arrest could lead to tighter sanctions against Belarus.

Jerzy Pomianowski, the ministry’s under-secretary of state who met with the ambassador, "demanded the immediate release of Andrzej Poczobut from custody," the ministry’s spokesman, Marcin Bosacki, said in a statement. "He noted that such actions would deepen the self-isolation of the Belarusian authorities, make relations with the European Union even more difficult, and cause another wave of criticism from the international community, which may in turn lead to the tightening of existing sanctions."

Mr. Poczobut was arrested at his home in Hrodna on June 21. He was working on an article when officers of a prosecutor`s office, the Investigative Committee and the police arrived at his house at around 4 p.m. They searched the house and arrested Mr. Poczobut in the presence of his family. The man was taken first to a prosecutor`s office and then to a pretrial detention center.

“Criminal proceedings under Part Two of the Criminal Code`s Article 367 against Andrzej Poczobut, a citizen of Belarus, were instituted by the Investigative Committee based on an inquiry carried out by the Hrodna regional office of the Committee for State Security,” the Investigative Committee’s spokesman, Pavel Traulka, told BelaPAN on Friday.

According to the findings of the inquiry, articles written by Mr. Poczobut and posted on the Internet "contained libelous statements concerning the head of state," Mr. Traulka said. An examination by linguists found that the articles contained "words, phrases and expressions used with regard to the president of the Republic of Belarus that are libel and discredit the Republic of Belarus," Mr. Traulka said.
The 39-year-old journalist is already under a suspended prison sentence imposed on him on the same charge.

Last year he spent three months in jail and was eventually sentenced to a suspended three-year prison term with two years` probation for allegedly insulting and defaming Mr. Lukashenka in his articles.
As Mr. Poczobut told reporters, defamation was largely found in the fact that he had called Mr. Lukashenka a dictator. // BelaPAN