Belarusian Authorities Don’t Accredit Polish Journalists
According to RFE/RL, the Belarusian authorities have already composed a list of the Polish journalists, the presence of whom was ‘undesirable’ in Belarus.
The Polish Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszeczny is an authoritative newspaper that was one of the few independent editions during the communist rule in Poland. 1,5 years ago it elucidated the Ukrainian Orange revolution, for which the editorial board was even awarded Golden Pen by the Ukrainian journalists.
Tygodnik Powszechny wanted to direct to the presidential election its journalists Andrzej Bzhezecki and Malgozhata Nocun who specialize in East-European events an have recently visited Belarus.
However, this time the Belarusian authorities refused to accredit Andrzej Bzhezecki and Malgozhata Nocun without any explanations.
Voiciech Pienciach from Tygodnik Powszechny commented: ‘I think that the appropriate services or persons have read the articles of our correspondent about Belarus and decided not to let them to the presidential election. For instance, we’ve had a good interview with Aliaksandr Milinkevich. What concerns the Ukrainian experience of our newspaper - it also could influence the decision of the Belarusian authorities, but it seems to me they conduct a much greater action against all independent mass media, not only Tygodnik Powszechny. Judging by what I can see I think Lukashenka prepares something like 13 December in Poland, this is the day when the military state was introduced. However, he wants to isolate all potential rivals before the election day, so that they would be imprisoned in advance.’
The largest daily of the Central and Eastern Europe Gazeta Wyborcza also has problems connected with the elucidation the presidential election in Belarus. The authorities didn’t let in Belarus the correspondent Waclaw Radziwinowicz and the Belarusian correspondent of Gazeta Wyborcza, another journalist still hasn’t received accreditation and the Belarusian correspondent of the newspaper Andrei Pachobut is under arrest.
’It is hard to imagine how we can work normally if we don’t have our journalists in the place of the events’, -- pointed Mr Radziwinowicz.
Accreditation wasn’t issued to some foreign journalists who work in Warsaw and decided to go to Belarus in order to report about the presidential election.
