Polish-Belarusian border crossing in Bobrowniki closed says minister
The Polish interior minister has said that the Polish-Belarusian border crossing in Bobrowniki, north-eastern Poland, will be closed as of noon on Friday, February 10, until further notice in the interests of “state security”.
The crossing is one of the major transit points between the two countries and was a hotspot during the 2021 migration crisis when thousands of people tried to get into Poland from Belarus.
"Due to an important interest of state security, I have decided to suspend traffic at the Polish-Belarusian border crossing in Bobrowniki," Mariusz Kaminski wrote on Twitter on Thursday.
The minister provided no explanation for the closure.
Kaminski also said that, following a resolution of the Sejm, the lower house of Polish parliament, which condemned the conviction and jailing by a Belarusian court of Andrzej Poczobut, a Polish-Belarusian activist, he had decided to include more people connected with the regime of Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian president, on a sanctions list.
Poczobut, who is also a journalist, was sentenced to eight years in prison by a court in Grodno on Wednesday. Arrested in March 2021, Poczobut was accused of "instigating hatred against religious and national groups, and rehabilitating Nazism."
Poczobut was active for the Union of Poles in Belarus (ZPB), a Polish minority organisation that has been delegalised by the Belarusian authorities.
"In connection with the resolution of the Polish Sejm, I have ordered my services to prepare motions to expand the sanctions list with names of more people who are connected with the Lukashenko regime and who are responsible for repressions against Poles living in Belarus," Kaminski wrote on Twitter.
The sanctions list includes names of people who support both Russia's war on Ukraine and the violation of human rights in Russia and Belarus. It was first published last April.
Polish lawmakers in their resolution also called for immediate individual sanctions to be imposed by Poland and the European Union on "those who represented the apparatus of repression of the Belarusian authorities: judges, prosecutors, officials and people involved in the persecution of Andrzej Poczobut." (PAP)
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