Poland, Belarus in row over activist’s death :: Charter'97 :: News

A Belarusian opposition group accused the police on Tuesday of refusing to investigate the recent death of an ethnic Polish activist who had spoken out against the authoritarian regime in Minsk, further souring relations between Poland and Belarus.

The Union of Poles in Belarus (UPB) - a group devoted to promoting the rights of ethnic Poles that has been at the center of the recent decline in relations - said the authorities had prevented any real inquiry into the death of Jusefa Varaksa, DPA reported.

Varaksa, a 68-year-old political activist, was found dead in her home outside Minsk last week, the victim of a brutal knife attack.

Andrei Pachobut, a UPB spokesman, connected her death to a recent report on state-controlled television that suggested that UPB officials had accepted millions of dollars from NATO member states to perform anti-governmental activities within Belarus.

He speculated that the story had made Varaksa a target for criminals attempting to find the whereabouts of those funds, which the UPB has denied ever existed.

Belarus and Poland have been engaged in a low-grade diplomatic spat since May, when both countries expelled each other’s diplomats.

Minsk started the latest dispute by declaring the Polish embassy’s first secretary persona non grata for allegedly working with the Belarusian Polish minority against the government of President Aleksandar Lukashenko.

Lukashenko has long accused Poland, a member of NATO and the EU, of seeking to undermine his regime.

Many ethnic Belarusians live in Poland, and some have engaged in pro-democracy activities on the part of Polish NGOs. The sizeable Polish minority in Belarus became an increasingly visible target of Lukashenko’s anger in March, after the organization elected a new leadership that the Belarusian authorities feared would make the UPB a focal point of dissent.

The authorities subsequently canceled the election and, according to the UPB, launched a wide-ranging crackdown on the group, interrogating and threatening a number of ethnic Poles.