Minsk Police Detain Editor of Magazyn Polski Andrei Pachobut

According to pahonia.promedia.by

At 1.20 p.m. in Minsk the police detained Andrei Pachobut, the chief editor of Magazyn Polski ‘in emigration’ and activist of the officially unrecognized Union of Poles in Belarus. He was detained during a telephone talk with a correspondent of the web-edition Pahonia. He wanted to comment on the achievements of the UPB since the 6th assembly of the organization, but only managed to say he was being seized y unknown persons. Before the detention Andrei Pachobut received calls from Radio Racyja and the influential Polish weekly Gazeta Wyborcza. According to the informal press-secretary of the Union of Poles in Belarus Andzhei Pisalnik, the detention can be related to Pachobut’s professional activity.

13 March 2006 is day of the 1st anniversary of the 6th extraordinary assembly of the Union of Poles in Belarus at which Anzhalika Borys was democratically elected the chair of the organization. However, the Belarusian authorities took all possible efforts to split the UPB and deprive from the leading positions the persons whom they couldn’t control. However, according to the 1st chair of the UPB Tadevush Havin, they failed to subordinate the organization, which is confirmed by the intense activity of the organization that is not recognized by the authorities and whose activists are systematically persecuted by the state.