Journalist Andrzej Poczobut to spend next six months in SHU

This infor­ma­tion was dis­closed by Andrzej Poc­zobut in his let­ter. The pun­ish­ment was giv­en for refus­ing to work, which the jour­nal­ist claims he could not do.

Ini­tial­ly, a prison para­medic declined to issue a med­ical cer­tifi­cate qual­i­fy­ing Andrzej for being trans­ferred to a secure hous­ing unit (SHU) due to a heart rhythm dis­or­der and a blood pres­sure read­ing of 190/140 dur­ing the exam­i­na­tion. How­ev­er, the next day, a ther­a­pist came and signed the cer­tifi­cate.

It should also be not­ed that pri­or to this inci­dent, Andrzej Poc­zobut had spent 30 days in a pun­ish­ment cell of the Navap­o­latsk cor­rec­tion facil­i­ty, where he was placed imme­di­ate­ly after the trans­fer.

Along with oth­er Union of Poles of Belarus activists, Andrzej Poc­zobut was tak­en into cus­tody on 25 March 2021 under what is known as the “Pol­ish case”.

For an arti­cle about the Sovi­et attack on Poland in Sep­tem­ber 1939, Andrzej Poc­zobut was accused of incit­ing nation­al hatred. In the arti­cle, the jour­nal­ist referred to the Sovi­et inva­sion of Poland as an act of aggres­sion. The evi­den­tiary mate­ri­als in the case also con­tained the journalist’s defense of the Pol­ish minor­i­ty in Belarus, an arti­cle about the quash­ing of Belaru­sian protests in 2020, and a 2006 piece about one of the lead­ers of the anti-com­mu­nist move­ment in the Hrod­na region of Belarus.

The jour­nal­ist was sen­tenced to 8 years of incar­cer­a­tion on 8 Feb­ru­ary 2023.

While in cus­tody, the jour­nal­ist was deprived of fam­i­ly vis­its, his let­ters were cen­sored, and his cor­re­spon­dence with his son was blocked. Andrzej Poc­zobut endured con­stant pres­sure through­out his more than two-year incar­cer­a­tion. Despite being offered release in exchange for request­ing a par­don and leav­ing Belarus, he repeat­ed­ly refused.

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