Polish law enforcement officers detain Ukrainian journalists from Ukrainska Pravda for several hours near the border with Belarus
Poland (Svidomi) — Polish law enforcement officers detained Ukrainian journalist Mykhailo Tkach, along with a cameraman, near the border with Belarus, the Ukrainska Pravda editorial team reports.
The journalist was filming a story about trade between Poland, Belarus, and Russia. The Ukrainian citizens were later released, and some footage was deleted.
"Near the Polish border with Belarus, Polish police officers approached us. We showed them our documents and journalist's certificates. They started grabbing our cameras and searching us... Then we were brought to the commandant's office... they took all the memory cards from the cameras, all the phones and documents,"
says Mykhailo Tkach.
The journalist says he told the commandant's office that the men were journalists and had come to film how Poland trades with Belarus and Russia through Belarus, "how agricultural products go from Russia and Belarus to Poland".
"They started asking me who else knew about it, whether the Ukrainian authorities, the Ukrainian government, knew about it. They asked who our sources were, how we found out about it, how long we had been working on this topic," Tkach said.
According to the Ukrainian journalist, he and the cameraman were detained for at least 4 hours, and the police spoke only Polish (in the commandant's office — in English). After the journalists got their memory cards back, it turned out that part of the video footage had been deleted.
"We are outraged by this situation, which was normalised only after publicity and with the support of the Ukrainian Embassy in Poland. The Ukrainska Pravda team thanks the ambassador and the consul for their quick response and indifference,"
commented Sevgil Musaieva, editor-in-chief of Ukrainska Pravda.
