Andrzej Poczobut, a Polish-born Belarusian, is a correspondent for Poland’s left-liberal newspaper Gazeta WyborczaFor many years he has been a vocal critic of Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko and his regime.
Pokzobat was arrested twice in 2010 and 2011 after reporting on protest rallies. In 2020, during mass protests following a fraudulent election, the Belarusian regime’s hostility towards journalists intensified.
Members of the KGB, the Belarusian intelligence service, raided his apartment in Grodno on March 25, 2021. They arrested Poczbut and confiscated his computers, documents and Polish books.
Lukashenko himself commented publicly on the arrest. “An illegal organization in Grodno openly glorified bandits and Nazis,” the dictator thundered. For Pokzobut, it was the beginning of a long journey through a series of Belarusian prisons.
‘Knows his life is in danger’
One of these was a prison in the capital, Minsk, where Polish rebels were imprisoned in the 19th century. In an attempt to break Pokzobut’s resistance, he was transferred to death row.
He was given a show trial in 2023 and sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of “damaging national security”, “inciting national or religious hatred” and attempting to “rehabilitate Nazism”. Pokzobut was sent to the notorious penal colony No. 1 – a camp in the north of the country, not far from the border with Russia, where conditions are especially harsh. His first few months there were spent in solitary confinement.
“Andrzej knows that his life is in danger. He took the path [Czech writer Vaclav] howl, [Nelson] Mandela, et al [Polish union leader Lech] Walesa followed. He’s staying on that path,” wrote Adam Michnik, editor-in-chief of Gazeta WyborczaWho himself was an anti-communist dissident. Michnik examined the journalist’s “heroic stance”.
Dangerous Combination: Polish, and Governance-Critical
Poczbut is a member of the Polish minority in Belarus, which is estimated at 300,000 to 1 million people in a country with a total population of 9.1 million. The 52-year-old journalist, who holds only a Belarusian passport, was also active in the Union of Poles in Belarus, a group that represents the Polish minority in Belarus. Along with him, two women workers of the organization were also arrested, but they were later released.
Pocobot has worked for famous people Gazeta Wyborcza For about 20 years. He constantly found himself in the firing line of the Belarusian authorities, but usually easily managed to escape. He was prosecuted in 2011 for describing Lukashenko as a dictator in one of his articles and calling for the EU to impose sanctions on Belarus. He was sentenced to prison but was released after a few months. At the time, Brussels was trying to persuade Lukashenko not to align himself so closely with Russia and wanted to suggest the dictator was willing to compromise.
Since 2023, Polish media have occasionally reported that secret negotiations were taking place to secure Poczbut’s release. But the journalist was not released as part of any deal, nor in the latest prisoner swap carried out by the US.
not begging for mercy
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a Belarusian opposition leader living in exile abroad, said, “The Belarusian regime wanted to break Pokzobut’s resistance, but it failed. The only thing left for Lukashenko is revenge.” Her husband, Syrhei Tsikhanousky, who ran against Lukashenko as a presidential candidate in 2020, was released in June after five years in prison in Belarus.
Bartosz Wilinski, Poczbut’s colleague Gazeta Wyborcza, He believes Lukashenko feels personally hurt by the accusation that he is a dictator. Wielinski told DW that Poczbut doesn’t just represent principled, conscientious journalism — he’s also a symbol of Poland, which the Belarusian dictator sees as a symbol of the West he hates.
Pokzobat could have been freed much earlier if he had surrendered to Lukashenko, begged the dictator for mercy and left Belarus. This offer was first made to him soon after his arrest but he has consistently rejected it.
Now his courage and devotion to duty have inspired the European Parliament to award him the prize in 2025 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of ThoughtHe shares the award with Georgian journalist Maziya Amaglobeli, who was arrested in January this year and sentenced to two years in prison in August.
The Sakharov Prize was established by the European Parliament in 1988 and is named after Russian physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov. The annual award honors people, groups or organizations for outstanding advocacy for human rights and freedom of expression.
However, it is not certain whether the award will actually help the jailed journalist. In the past, Lukashenko has responded to international pressure by doubling down on autocracy.
This article has been translated from German.