Belarus’ chargé d’affaires in Poland was summoned to the Polish Foreign Ministry on Thursday, July 4, after a court in Gomel sentenced Irina Slavnikova, a journalist based in Poland, to TV channel Belsat, to five years. of prison. The announcement was made by the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland Lukasz Jasina.

Earlier, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Martin Przydacz said that a strong protest would be handed over to the Belarusian diplomat in connection with Slavnikova’s conviction. On behalf of the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he promised to demand “immediate release” not only of the Belsat correspondent, but also of other people illegally imprisoned by the Belarusian regime. These words are quoted by the Polish news agency PAP.

Among other things, Przydacz mentioned Andrzej Poczobut, journalist and member of the Union of Poles in Belarus. He was recently released into custody again – despite his sentence expiring in August 2021.

Slavnikova was convicted of “extremism”

Irina Slavnikova was detained on October 30, 2021 at the airport in Minsk, as she and her husband were returning from a holiday in Egypt. First, she was prosecuted twice for “distributing extremist materials”, which the investigation found links to publications by the TV channel Belsat on her personal Facebook page. On November 26, it became known that a criminal case had been opened against Irina under the terms of article 342 of the Penal Code (Organization or participation in actions of gross violation of public order). She was later accused of leading an extremist formation (Article 361-1 of the Penal Code of the Republic of Belarus).

Slavnikova’s harsh sentence caused outrage both in the Republic of Belarus itself and abroad. The Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) demanded the cancellation, stressing that “journalists are not extremists and dissent is not a crime”. The German Union of Journalists (DJV) in a commentary to DW called the verdict “another act of arbitrariness by the Belarusian dictatorship”, and the German branch of the international non-governmental organization “Reporters Without Borders” called the incident a blow to the press freedom.