Buildings used by the Polish minority were confiscated by the regime of Alyaksandr Lukashenka.
The harassment of Poles in Belarus intensified after the fraudulent presidential elections in 2020. At that time, the leaders of the unrecognized Union of Poles in Belarus supported the democratic aspirations of Belarusian society, for which in March 2021, the president of the Union of Poles in Belarus, Andżelika Borys, a member of the board of directors, the Polish journalist from Hrodna, Andrzej Poczobut, local Polish community leaders Maria Tiszkowska and Irena Biernacka, and the director of a Polish school in Brest, Hanna Panishava, were taken into custody.
Repression also hit the Polish Educational Society in Hrodna, an educational organization independent of the ZPB. The Belarusian authorities accused it of tax arrears and imposed massive financial penalties, and in the fall of 2022 the PMS was liquidated by court order.
At that time, the Lukashenka regime confiscated the PMS buildings, which had been built with Polish taxpayers' money and housed a library, a third-level university, and a Polish-language high school. In March 2025, the Consulate of the Russian Federation in Hrodna moved in.
,,This is a clumsy provocation. However, we are not planning any official protest on this matter," the Foreign Ministry said in a comment to RMF.FM.
pj/en.belsat.eu, glosznadnimna.pl
