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BELTA.The Belarusian Public and Cultural Community (BPCC) in Poland has been deprived of grants of the Internal Affairs and Administration Ministry of Poland for three years. The annual grants amounted to some PLN500,000 (EUR128,000).
In Poland the ministry is responsible for controlling the activities and financing of national minorities' organisations.
According to Polish mass media, the BPCC was deprived of the grants for using them inappropriately. The ministry is quoted as saying, the Belarusian organisation spent around PLN6,000 (EUR1,500) out of education and culture funds on repairing its office in Bialystok.
Meanwhile, chairman of the Belarusian Public and Cultural Community Jan Syczewski sees political aspects of the ministry's decision and says the decision is designed to "destroy the BPCC and the Belarusian culture in Poland". Member of the Poland parliament from Bialystok constituency, member of the National and Ethnic Minorities Commission Eugeniusz Czykwin holds to a similar opinion. In his words, the ministry's decision is "extremely harsh and doesn't contribute to the development of national cultures in the country".
In turn, Polish analysts assume that the ministry's move can be an act of political vengeance by the ruling right-wing parties against Jan Syczewski, who had been a member of the parliament representing the Left Democratic Union (Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej) for many years.
The Belarusian Public and Cultural Community was created in Bialystok in the 1950s. It is the oldest and the largest Belarusian national minority organisation in Poland.
According to the latest population census held in 2002, there are around 50,000 Belarusians in Poland. However, activists of the Belarusian national minority name another figure — 250,000-300,000 people. Bialystok province is a place where the most of the Polish Belarusians live.
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