Poland has imposed sanctions on a further 365 Belarusian citizens over the imprisonment of a journalist of Polish origin in Belarus, the interior ministry said on Monday, amid rising tensions between Warsaw and Minsk.
Poland has been an important refuge for opponents of authoritarian Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, and Warsaw has also become one of the staunchest supporters of Ukraine since Minsk's main ally Russia invaded that country last year.
On Friday a Belarusian court upheld an earlier decision to sentence journalist Andrzej Poczobut to eight years in prison.
Poczobut was jailed on charges of encouraging actions aimed at harming the national security of Belarus, trying to rehabilitate Nazism and inciting ethnic hostility.
Poland says the charges against him are unjust and politically motivated.
"In view of the fact that the Supreme Court of the Republic of Belarus has upheld the draconian sentence against Andrzej Poczobut, on Monday, 29 May, the Minister of the Interior and Administration will announce the decision to put several hundred representatives of the regime of Alexander Lukashenko, namely politicians, judges, prosecutors and other individuals responsible for political repressions, including repressions against Poles in Belarus, on the sanctions list," Poland's Ministry of the Interior and Administration said in a statement.
The people are banned from entering the European Union's passport-free Schengen zone and will have any funds held in Poland frozen, the statement added.
Those on the list include members of parliament, judges, prosecutors and law enforcement officers as well as people who work in state media, the ministry added.
Twenty entities and 16 people associated mainly with Russian capital will also have any financial holdings frozen.
The Belarusian foreign ministry in Minsk could not immediately be reached for comment.
On Friday, after the Poczobut verdict, a draft regulation appeared on a Polish government website that would close Poland's eastern border to freight vehicles registered in Belarus and Russia until further notice.
Poland accuses Belarus of artificially creating a migrant crisis on the border by flying in people from the Middle East and Africa and attempting to push them across the frontier. Minsk has denied the accusation.
Źródło: TVN24 News in English, Reuters