PRAGUE -- Poland continues to pressure the Belarusian regime for the release of journalist Andrzej Poczobut and other political prisoners, the speaker of the Polish parliament (Sejm) said on August 30 at the Globsec security conference in Prague.
Poland is doing everything possible at the diplomatic level to send signals to authoritarian Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka that he must release political prisoners, Szymon Holownia said.
"If he wants the border crossings to be opened, if he wants to have transit corridors, he needs to cooperate with us on this issue," said Holownia in response to a question from RFE/RL. "We are trying to show that if he does not cooperate, the consequences for him, his regime, and his country will be very challenging."
Poland in 2023 closed all but one of its crossings with Belarus in response to the expulsion of several Polish diplomats from Minsk, as well as the sentencing of Poczobut to eight years in prison on multiple charges that Warsaw says are unjust and politically motivated.
Poczobut, a correspondent for the respected Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, was sentenced on charges of encouraging actions aimed at harming the national security of Belarus, trying to rehabilitate Nazism, and inciting ethnic hostility. Human rights defenders have recognized him as a political prisoner.
Poczobut was arrested in March 2021 amid rising tensions between Minsk and Warsaw following the brutal suppression of mass protests against Lukashenka after he claimed a landslide victory in a 2020 presidential election. The Belarusian opposition claimed the election was rigged in favor of Lukashenka, who has been in power since 1994.
Relations between Poland and Belarus worsened further after a migrant crisis on their shared border and after Lukashenka allowed Moscow to use its territory as a launching pad for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Holownia noted that the migration pressure on the Poland-Belarus border has significantly decreased compared to a few months ago. He attributed this to steps taken by the Polish government. Poland has built a fence equipped with electronic protection and beefed up the number of border guards along its 400-kilometer border with Belarus.
But Holownia admitted that Polish politicians sometimes do not know "which buttons to press to activate processes in Belarus."
"Lukashenka has turned Belarus -- a proud, independent country -- practically into a colony of Russia," he said. "But we sometimes do not know the nature of their relations and the level of mutual hatred, envy, and aggression that exists between [Lukashenka and Russian President Vladimir Putin]."