Andrzej Poczobut stays in segregation without medication

“This is our third year gath­er­ing despite the weath­er, time of year, rain, snow, and frost. And we will con­tin­ue to gath­er and raise aware­ness about Andrzej Poc­zobut, who is cur­rent­ly impris­oned in Novap­o­latsk Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty and is expe­ri­enc­ing health issues. He urgent­ly needs heart med­ica­tion, as his con­di­tion wors­ens each day with high­er blood pres­sure and slow­er heart rhythm. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we are unsure how to pro­vide him with the nec­es­sary help and sup­port,” said Mr Zaniews­ki.

Marek Zaniews­ki spoke about the chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tion faced by the polit­i­cal pris­on­er in the pen­i­ten­tiary dur­ing the ral­ly.

“The fam­i­ly gets only a few let­ters from him. The let­ters tell us that he is still in seg­re­ga­tion and doesn’t get the med­i­cine he needs every day. We are doing every­thing we can to learn more and fol­low his sit­u­a­tion,” he says.

Andrzej Poc­zobut was arrest­ed in Hrod­na, Belarus on 25 March 2021 and accused of incit­ing nation­al hatred for an arti­cle about the Sovi­et attack on Poland in Sep­tem­ber 1939. In the arti­cle, the jour­nal­ist referred to the Sovi­et inva­sion of Poland as an act of aggres­sion.

The evi­den­tiary mate­ri­als in the case also con­tained the journalist’s defense of the Pol­ish minor­i­ty in Belarus, an arti­cle about the quash­ing of Belaru­sian protests in 2020, and a 2006 piece about one of the lead­ers of the anti-com­mu­nist move­ment in the Hrod­na region of Belarus.

The jour­nal­ist was sen­tenced to 8 years of incar­cer­a­tion on 8 Feb­ru­ary 2023. He was recent­ly trans­ferred to a Secure Hous­ing Unit for six months and will stay there until Feb­ru­ary 2024.

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