Andrzej Poczobut

The 51-year-old journalist Andrzej Poczobut from Belarus was arrested on 25 March 2021 and sentenced to eight years in prison on 8 February 2023. He is currently held in a high-security penal colony in Navapolatsk. Despite serious health issues, his access to medical care remains limited.

Case facts:

Date of birth: 16 April 1973

Arrested: 25 March 2021

Sentenced: 8 February 2023

Charges: “Calls for actions aimed at undermining the national security of the Republic of Belarus” and “incitement to hatred”

Sentence: 8 years in prison

Report:

Andrzej Poczobut is a Belarusian journalist and civic activist who has long worked to defend the rights of the Polish minority in Belarus, to which he himself belongs. Since early 2023, he has been imprisoned for his political and journalistic activities. He is serving an eight-year sentence and is currently held in Penal Colony No. 1, a high-security facility, in the city of Navapolatsk.

Despite serious health problems, Andrzej Poczobut has been placed in solitary confinement. Former detainees in Belarus regularly report inadequate medical care in prisons; in some cases, prisoners have died as a result of denied treatment. Correspondence with the journalist is severely restricted, especially letters written in Polish.

Poczobut worked for many years as a correspondent for the Polish national newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, an important media outlet in Poland and for Polish communities abroad. He reported critically on Belarusian politics, as well as on the history and situation of the Polish minority in the country. He was also an active member of the Union of Poles in Belarus, a key cultural organization preserving Polish language and culture in the authoritarian state. The authorities, however, view the organization’s activities with suspicion.

Despite repression, Andrzej Poczobut is widely regarded as a principled and courageous journalist and an engaged representative of the Hrodna region. His work and activism have received recognition in Belarus, Poland, and across Europe.

Andrzej Poczobut’s commitment to freedom and truth

In his youth, Andrzej Poczobut studied law and planned to become a lawyer. However, the rapid consolidation of authoritarian rule in Belarus obstructed his legal career. Journalism became his second vocation. He began working for local newspapers and later became a correspondent for Polish media.

After the disputed Belarusian presidential election in 2020, he repeatedly appeared on Polish television, openly criticizing the Lukashenko regime. Already in 2011, he was held in pre-trial detention for allegedly defaming the Belarusian president and was sentenced to three years of probation.

On 25 March 2021, he was arrested again. This time, he was accused of “inciting hatred” and “rehabilitating Nazism.” The charges were based on articles in which he critically addressed the joint Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 and the repression of the Polish population in his home region. These topics conflicted with the official historical narrative promoted by the Lukashenko regime, which often portrays the Soviet Union as a model state.

On 8 February 2023, Andrzej Poczobut was sentenced to eight years in prison. The prosecution cited his public statements defending the Polish minority in Belarus, his support for the 2020 protests, and an article published in the Polish magazine Magazyn Polski in 2006 about Anatol Radzivonik, a Polish anti-communist resistance commander from Hrodna.

In autumn 2021, Poczobut refused to submit a request for clemency to President Lukashenko. On 23 June 2023, the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs added him to its official “list of extremists.”

Hope must not mean forgetting

Although many political prisoners in Belarus were released on Saturday, 13 December 2025, Andrzej Poczobut was not among them. He remains imprisoned, like hundreds of journalists, activists, opposition figures, and other critics of the Lukashenko regime, under harsh conditions in a penal colony.

Sakharov Prize awarded on 17 December 2025

Only two days after the release of 123 Belarusian political prisoners, the still-imprisoned journalist was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Human Rights. At the award ceremony, he was represented by his daughter Jana Poczobut. She thanked the European Parliament on behalf of her father and spoke about the burden of silence and uncertainty endured by the families of political prisoners.

The European Parliament has repeatedly condemned repression in Belarus, called for the release of all political prisoners, and imposed sanctions. By awarding Andrzej Poczobut the Sakharov Prize, it honored both his work and the democratic opposition in Belarus.

The Polish minority as a target of repression

Around 300,000 people of Polish descent live in Belarus. This community has repeatedly become a target of repression under the rule of Alyaksandr Lukashenko. Authorities increasingly portray the Polish minority as a threat to national unity.

Catholicism, a core element of Polish identity, also distinguishes the minority from the predominantly Orthodox Belarusian population. Polish-language education and publications, such as those produced by Poczobut, are vital for the community but face severe restrictions.