Poland and Belarus clash over minority

19th February 2010

© PAP President of the Union of Poles Andzelika Borys protesting in Grodno last week Share:

The tricky and often strained relations between Poland and Belarus have come under renewed pressure after about 40 ethnic Poles living in the eastern European country were arrested.

In what was widely perceived in Poland as a harsh crackdown by the Belarusian government, police detained the people, all of whom were connected to the Union of Poles in Belarus - an organisation unrecognised by Minsk.

A number received five-day gaol sentences for organising an illegal protest and Angelika Boris, the union’s leader, was fined EUR 235.

The punishment handed out to the Belarusian Poles drew a sharp response from Warsaw, which has often criticised Belarus in the past over its treatment of its 400,000 Poles.

President Lech Kaczynski demanded that his Belarusian counterpart, the authoritarian Alexander Lukashenko, “resolve the situation of the Polish minority”, while the government threatened Belarus with isolation.

“The Belarusian government has a choice: either it accepts the democratic standards set by the European Council and the European Union, or it will see itself cut off,” Jan Borkowski, secretary of state to the Polish foreign ministry.

Knowing that the threat would sound hollow without the backing of Europe, Poland also began to exert what pressure it could muster in Brussels to garner support from the European Union.

“To us, it is very significant that the European Union acknowledges the repression of national minorities, predominantly the Polish one in this case, and declare it impermissible,” said Donald Tusk, the prime minister.

So far the campaign seems to have met with reasonable success with Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, expressing her disappointment with the behaviour of Minsk, and warning that the union’s “considerable openness to engagement with Belarus” was conditional on its respect for human rights.

But so far Minsk has remained undisturbed by Polish anger and the EU’s words, accusing the Polish media of “an anti-Belarusian campaign”.

“Polish media reports, distorting the real state of things and actual facts, mislead Poland’s political leaders,” the Belarusian foreign ministry said in statement.