The Belarusian charge d’ affaires in Poland has been summoned to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs concerning the persecution of journalists and the Polish minority in his country, Łukasz Jasina, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on Thursday.
Łukasz Jasina said the main reason for the summons was a Belarusian court’s recent sentencing of Iryna Slaunikava, a journalist who has worked for Polish state-owned broadcaster TVP for the past 15 years, to a five-year labour camp term.
Slaunikava was sentenced in Gomel, southeastern Belarus, on charges of “creating an extremist formation.”
Read also ⤵️
TVP Journalist Iryna Slaunikava has been sentenced to 5 years in a penal colony in Belarus
After the meeting between the Belarusian diplomat and the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jasina said the Belarusian side saw Poland’s objections to Slaunikava’s conviction and the Belarusian regime’s steps towards the Polish minority as interference in its internal affairs.
Earlier, Jasina said that also discussed will be recent acts of vandalism on Polish war cemeteries in Belarus and the continued persecution of the country’s Polish minority, especially the members and leaders of the officially unrecognised Union of Poles in Belarus.