Poland will move to close a crossing point on its border with Belarus, the Polish Interior Ministry announced on Thursday, a day after a Polish journalist sentenced to eight years in prison A court in Minsk has ruled Poland over the allegations as politically motivated.
“Due to the vital interest of state security, I decided to suspend until further notice, from February 10 this year, at 12:00, traffic at the Polish-Belarusian border crossing in Bobroniki,” Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski said in a statement. statement,
The Bobroniki (or Bobronikach in Polish) outpost is located in eastern Poland. one in six Waypoints on the Polish-Belarusian border.
Polish authorities are also preparing to expand the list of people linked to the regime of Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko who are currently subject to sanctions from Poland, Kaminsky said.
The move comes a day after Andrzej Poczobut, a Polish activist and journalist based in Belarus, was sentenced by a Minsk court to eight years in prison for allegedly inciting hatred and publicly threatening national security Was.
pokjobut was arrested March 2021 As part of a wider crackdown by the Belarusian regime against the following political opponents months of mass protests Demand for Lukashenko’s resignation
In feedback Upon the court’s ruling, the Polish Foreign Ministry said the charges were “politically motivated” and demonstrated “long-standing systemic discrimination against the Polish national minority in Belarus”.
According to the 2019 data of the latest Belarusian national census, about 300,000 ethnic Poles live in the country – although the Polish government claims the real number may be as high as 1.1 million,
Relations between Minsk and Warsaw been stressed for years On the discriminatory treatment of the Belarusian regime towards the Polish minority.