reporter Agnieszka Lichnerowicz; photo - TOK FM
TOK FM radio reporter, Agnieszka Lichnerowicz and Borys Czerniawski a cameraman for Poland’s public television broadcaster TVP were detained near the courthouse where the delayed trial of Poczobut will begin on Friday.
"The journalists have been released. Our consul-general in Grodno just picked them up from the militia station there," Poland’s Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman Paulina Kapuscinska said last night.
The two journalists were detained by police after they attempted to take photographs of a group of demonstrators protesting against the rule of President Lukashenko.
"We asked the police officer, on what basis the reporters were being detained as they had all the necessary accreditation? The officer replied that he was just following orders,” said another TVP journalist Arleta Bojke.
The journalists are covering the trial of Andrzej Poczobut, who faces four years in jail for allegedly libelling and defaming the head of state of Belarus in ten articles published this year and last in the leading Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. The trial begins Friday after being postponed on Tuesday to “clarify indictments,” a Belarusian official said this week.
Poczobut is also an activist for the Union of Poles in Belarus, an organisation not recognised by the Lukashenko regime.
Meanwhile, another activist, Igor Bancer, who has been sentenced to five days imprisonment for “petty hooliganism” has gone on hunger strike in Grodno.
“[The arrest] is a political decision to thwart Igor getting to the hearing on Friday,” Bancer's wife, Andzelica Orechwo, who leads the Union of Poles told reporters yesterday.
“Since yesterday's arrest he has not eaten or drunk anything, and he will continue to starve himself,” she said.
Crackdown
Lukashenko's regime has led a sustained crackdown against opposition activists since protests following what arev regarded internationally as rigged presidential elections in December 2010.
A rash of arrests took place in the wake of the protests. Presidential candidate Ales Michalevec, who spent two months in prison following the election, says he was tortured while being interrogated.
Demonstrations were also reported in the capital, Minsk, yesterday, where around 1,000 people gathered to protest against rapidly worsening economic conditions in the country.
Rueters reports that The demonstrators — heeding a call on social media sites for a public show of dissatisfaction with Mr. Lukashenko’s government — displayed no slogans, and they were largely silent apart from some rhythmic clapping
President Lukashenka - whose regime is the subject of travel bans other sanctions by the EU - said he would suppress any protests against his regime.
The Belarusian rouble was devalued last month by 36 percent amid soaring inflation. The price of petrol has also increased steeply, adding to what appears to be a growing sense of unrest among the population with a protest at the border with Poland at the weekend being broken up by police. (pg/nh)
source: PAP/IAR