The full Polish-speaking political-media mainstream, and this part of the anti-system, which drops all the way to the said mainstream, for respective days he has been tearin' clothes in defence of Andrzej Poczobut. From Holown to Ziobra, from the Left to the All-Polish Youth, they all shed tears over the dense destiny of the “polonian activist” persecuted by “the Lukashenko regime”. I don't share that emotion. On the contrary, I have no intention of defending Pochobut.
To realize what's going on, we request to go back to the early 1990s. Young Pochobut was not just a Polish activist at the time, but it seems that he was besides Polish at all. Andrzej and his brother then played in the anarchist music band Deviation. They shouted their opposition to the planet in the Belarusian language, which at the time “Polish” Grodzieńczyści was a actual curiosium. However, not this episode and the political elections of the young Pochobuta make him defined at the time as a Belarusian or even a Belarusian nationalist. He was closely associated with the Belarusian National Front and the Young Front* – organizations bringing together Belarusian nationalists**.
It is hard to measure at what point a young Belarusian nationalist became an activist of the Polish number (or at which point he was seconded to this task). Even at the beginning of the first decade of the present century, Poczobut was a lecturer in law at the Grodno State Polytechnic College and in law and business technology. He then took up journalism. He worked, among others, in the Grodzieńian newspapers “Pahonia”, “Dien”, “Wriemia Cities”, “The Voice of Niemna” and the national independent diary “Narodnaja Wola”. As of 2006, he became a correspondent for “Gazeta Wyborcza” in Grodno. About the same time, he began subversive activity.
The conflict between the Belarusian Poles from the leadership of Mrs Boris and Mr Poczoput and the authorities of Belarus is presented in Polish-language infosphere as a clash of forces of good and evil. Here an innocent national number is persecuted by an evil tyrant. It's a fake painting. For decades Belarusian Poles have been instrumentally utilized by Polish (and most likely not only Polish) peculiar services for political destabilisation of Belarus. They are an instrument of political force on the administration of president Lukashenko.
From the Polish point of view, this policy is not only harmful but simply counterproductive. On the 1 hand, it led to a depreciation of the function of the Polish number in Belarus and a regulation of its freedoms, while on the another hand it pushed president Lukashenko into an increasingly tighter, non-alternative alliance with Russia. In this way, the most rusophobic part of the Polish political mainstream led to a real increase in Russian influences on the leading policy of balance between the east and the west, the Republic of Belarus. So we shot ourselves in the ft with a peculiar cruelty.
I do not know whether Andrzej Poczobut was only an unconscious tool or an accomplice in this demolition work. His biography and connections, however, propose the latter. That's why I'm not defending him and I'm not defending him in the future. To all those who present are dredging their robes, I urge to look critically at the consequences of the Polish policy towards Belarus. possibly then they will see the real consequences of their actions.
Today, alternatively of defending riotists, relationships request to be restored. Only in this way can we aid Belarusian Poles. It's time to correct the mistakes made by the madmen in charge of our country. Not just due to the fact that it's good for us. First of all, due to the fact that we owe it to our fellow Americans beyond the east border.
Przemysław Piasta
*This subject of the biography of the current dissident, although carefully overlooked in the current studies brings closer e.g.Zmitier Pankawiec, in Our Niwa, and behind him quotes tv Belsat (belsat.eu/en/news/30-03-2021- former-punk-sachist-grodzieński-patriot-andrzej-popopobut-z-Belarusian-perspective)
** Rafał Czachor, Political elite of Belarus in the process of systemic transformation from 1990 to 1994
photo profile FB Andrzej Poczobut
