Belarus and Poland

Some bloggers, though not in abundance probably due to the holiday time in Europe, react to this news. "A leader of an ethnic Polish group in Belarus has been jailed for 15 days for illegally meeting a visiting member of the Polish parliament."

"Is Aleksander Lukashenko so afraid of a tiny ethnic Polish minority that he has to lock them away for merely talking to someone from outside the country?" asks Siberian Light. "Absolutely absurd, and we should be glad that Russia has, so far, not descended to this kind of level."

Broke in Berlin compares Poland and Belarus border crossing to that of Finland and Russia. The difference is striking.

"Poor, poor Belarus," Broke in Berlin writes. "In my harder moments, I have little sympathy, thinking it's up to a nation to set its own fate, and the Belarusians have made their own mistakes, even if getting rid of the dictator is now no easy task (and many don't appear to want to, anyway)."

The beatroot, a journalist working in Warsaw, writes:

What really lies behind the dispute is that the president of Belarus, the Charlie Chaplinesque Alexander Lukashenko, has convinced himself that Poland is leading a campaign to get rid of him and his government, in the same way as what happened in Ukraine and Georgia.

Lukashenko believes that the ethnic Poles in his country are acting as some kind of vanguard in this process.

The beatroot agrees with the clownish Belarussian leader. Lukashenko might not be paranoid, but the CIA really is out to get him!

The Poles did play a major part in the so-called Orange Revolution in Ukraine.

He concludes with this: "So does Lukashenko have a point? Is Poland messing around with another nation's sovereignty? Is the US and EU behind the actions?

Is the Pope a Catholic?"

Robert over at Collission Commentary writes:

What bugs me really about this situation is that when Belarussian media accuse Poles of being imperialist agents Polish authorities prefer to stay wishy-washy. There was no serious reply to Lukashenko's insults. Moreover, our authorities don't want to take any counter-actions, both political and economic (like embargo or freezing EU aid for Belarus), because it'd harm Belarussian society and not its government. Well, they're damn right, but now they are doing nothing concrete totally (not counting asking EU for help). When US government introduced its embargos towards Poland in 1980s after the Martial Law, no one really cared about harming Polish society. And society was pissed, what helped to overthrow communist reign later on :>