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Alert

Journalists arrested amid tension with Poland

(RSF/IFEX) - RSF has 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.

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.

Three Polish journalists who had come to attend his trial before a 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," RSF said. "We fear that Pochobut's conviction is a warning to journalists fighting to defend the country's Polish minority." The organisation called on President Alexander Lukashenko to see to it that the journalists still being held are 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. They were taken to a police station for questioning and tried the next day. Pazhetski and Jaskiewicz were sentenced to 10 days in prison. Pochobut was previously fined in early July for joining a protest against the distribution of false copies of the Polish paper "Glos Znad Niemna".

Waclaw Radziwinowicz and Robert Kowalewski, reporters for Poland's largest daily, "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. Ten Belarusian and Polish journalists who were inside, from "Gazeta Wyborcza", Associated Press, "Glos Znad Niemna", "Nasha Niva", "Pressbol" and the website http://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. Three Polish diplomats were recently expelled from Minsk, and Warsaw also expelled three Belarusian diplomats. Poland recalled its ambassador in Belarus on 28 July and called for help from the European Union.