Andżelika Borys, head of the Union of Poles in Belarus (ZPB), said on Monday that the visit had passed without an incident.
“Thank God, the visit has been peaceful so far,” Borys told Poland’s PAP news agency. “Poles are very grateful to him for what he has done for them. Andrzej will be our voice in Poland.”
Poczobut arrived in Belarus last Tuesday, returning to the country where he had spent more than five years in detention and prison before his release in April.
He has since visited Grodno, Minsk, Vawkavysk, Kobryn and other towns, meeting Polish minority activists, relatives and former fellow prisoners, the PAP news agency reported.
He has also visited Polish memorial sites, including graves of soldiers killed during the German and Soviet invasions of Poland in September 1939.
In Grodno, Poczobut visited the base of the Union of Poles in Belarus, an organization which represents the country’s Polish minority.
Borys said Poczobut’s arrival in Belarus had had a strong emotional effect on members of the organization, many of whom had followed his imprisonment closely.
She recalled a meeting with elderly women who had sent him packages while he was in prison. “They hugged him and cried,” she said.
Poczobut has also met his father and former inmates, including doctor Andrei Liubetski, who was held in a neighboring cell after Poczobut’s arrest in 2021.
Borys said strangers had approached Poczobut in Minsk to greet him in Polish. Members of the Polish community had mainly asked about his health and how he had endured his imprisonment.
The Union of Poles now expects Poczobut to act as a link between the Polish minority in Belarus and institutions in Poland.
He is a member of the Polish Diaspora Consultative Council, an advisory body to the Polish upper-house Speaker. “Everyone understands that Andrzej will be our voice in Poland,” Borys said.
Education is among the issues Poczobut intends to raise. Around 3,000 children currently study Polish in Belarus through classroom and online courses supported by the Union of Poles. Official figures put the country’s Polish minority at about 300,000 people.
Poczobut was arrested in March 2021 and sentenced in 2023 to eight years in a penal colony on charges including inciting hatred and calling for actions harmful to Belarusian national security.
Human rights groups regarded him as a political prisoner. He was released on April 28 after more than five years in Belarusian detention and prisons.
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP