Poland

New York, March 30, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists called on Belarusian authorities today to stop the politically motivated prosecution of Andrzej Poczobut, a prominent correspondent for Poland's largest daily, Gazeta Wyborcza.

On Monday, prosecutors in the western city of Grodno filed criminal charges against Poczobut for allegedly insulting Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko in articles printed in Gazeta Wyborcza and the Belarusian news website Belarussky Partizan beginning in October 2010, local and international press reported. Poczobut faces up to two years in prison if convicted.

Some press gains are reported in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan but the Color Revolutions have yet to deliver lasting reforms.

New York, January 26, 2006—A Polish journalist convicted in a rare criminal libel prosecution has been freed two days into his prison term after the country's top constitutional court ordered the suspension of his sentence, according to news reports.

Andrzej Marek, editor-in-chief of the weekly Wiesci Polickie in the town of Police, was released from a municipal prison in the northwestern city of Szczecin on January 18. The criminal libel charge stemmed from two February 2001 articles alleging that Piotr Misilo, speaker of the promotion and information unit of the Police City Council, had obtained his post through blackmail and used the position to promote his private advertising business.

New York, January 17, 2006— The Committee to Protect Journalists today called the jailing of a Polish journalist for criminal libel an affront to Polish democracy and called on the Polish president to pardon him.

"Poland is now part of democratic Europe and democracies do not jail journalists for criticizing officials," CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said. "We condemn the jailing of Andrzej Marek and call on President Kaczynski to pardon him immediately. We also call on the Polish authorities to decriminalize libel and leave redress for defamation to the civil courts as in established democracies."

CPJ Update The Committee to Protect Journalists January 13, 2006

New York, January 12, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the imminent jailing of Andrzej Marek, editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper Wiesci Polickie in the northwestern town of Police. Convicted of libeling a local official in articles published in 2001, Marek is due to begin serving a three-month sentence on Monday, according to CPJ sources.

Overview
by Alex Lupis

Authoriatarian rulers strengthened their hold on power in many former Soviet republics in 2004. Their secretive, centralized governments aggressively suppressed all forms of independent activity, from journalism and human rights monitoring to religious activism and political opposition.

New York, June 23, 2004—The Polish Supreme Court yesterday upheld the three-month jail sentence of a journalist found guilty of libeling a local official in November 2003 and ordered that he be jailed immediately.

Andrzej Marek, editor in chief of the weekly Wiesci Polickie (Police News) in the western town of Police, was convicted in November 2003 of libeling Piotr Misilo, then the appointed speaker of the Promotion and Information Unit of the Police City Council, in two articles published in Wiesci Polickie in February 2001. The articles accused Misilo of obtaining his post through blackmail and using it to promote his private advertising business.