Call for help!
Gross violations of democracy, rule of law
and human rights in Poland!
On October 15, 2023, parliamentary elections took place in Poland. A coalition of post-communist parties advocating for the improvement of democratic standards and the allegedly endangered rule of law came to power. However, within a few weeks of their rule, there have been numerous brutal attacks with the use of physical force on democratic state institutions like public media, state employees and parliamentarians from the opposition, Supreme Court judges, chiefs of security forces, the Prosecutor General, and lately the President of Poland himself!
Increasingly physical violence is replacing the public debate. The opposition politicians, the judiciary, journalists, state employees, and even private businesses are being intimidated and persecuted.
Numerous fundamental principles of the Polish Constitution are being openly and blatantly violated every day! There is a real threat to the freedom of speech and the physical well-being of journalists, opposition politicians, and state employees.
The first political prisoners have been taken! their human rights are being violated! Now they are on a hunger strike and appeal to the international community FOR HELP!
After years of communism, Poland struggled to rebuild its democratic institutions, casting off the yoke of the totalitarian past imposed by Moscow’s occupiers. Despite significant economic progress, changes in some areas were slow and inadequate due to former communists retaining significant influence in the country after the formal demise of the communist system.
A leader of the Solidarity movement and a Peace Prize winner Lech Walesa who became the President of Poland in 1990, turned out to be a communist agent who assured a smooth transition of the communist criminals to successful businessmen in the post-communist Poland. As a result, Poland was denied the benefit of the necessary process to serve justice to communist criminals and traitors, who continue to harm Poland to this day.
Poland was denied the transitional justice healing process essential in every post-conflict society.
To this day, individuals responsible for the repressions during martial law sit on the courts, despite their advanced age, and adjudicate or influence cases against their former victims from the Solidarity movement!
The attack on the efforts to reform the broken justice system, whereby the former oppressors adjudicate cases of their former victims, angered and united left-wing groups that recently assumed power in Poland. However, instead of improving democratic standards and the rule of law, they chose the path of an unprecedented assault on democracy and the rule of law, including the devastation of the state institutions, attempts to delegitimize and completely wipe out the opposition and all the media and communication channels that do not support their regime led by Donald Tusk.
The first decision of the new government was the forcible takeover of public media. According to Polish law, public television stations should be managed by government-independent institutions according to specific terms outlined by Polish law.
In total disregard of this law, strong bulldozers illegally appointed by the new government forcibly shut down and disrupted the signal of the main news channels of the public television stations across Poland, and with the help of hired private security personnel, forcibly removed the legal boards of the media institutions.
The employees of the public media were not allowed to return to work even after the court declared these actions of the government illegal. Too bad for the courts, the new government says!
The perpetrators also immediately took down and blocked the documentary film “Reset” which reveals their dealings with Putin’s Russia in connection with the assassination of the Polish President in Smoleńsk, Russia, on April 10, 2010.
Today hundreds of journalists are unable to work in Poland, and many have already been dismissed from work. The ruling coalition also organizes attacks on private media critical of its actions, using hybrid warfare mechanisms of lies, manipulations, defamation, and intimidation, used by the authoritarian regimes.
Mafia Revenge
At the beginning of the year, the police stormed the Presidential Palace, arresting two members of the parliament without the knowledge and consent of the President. Those two members of the parliament acted as Minister and Deputy Minister of the Central Anticorruption Bureau in the former government.
They are being persecuted right now for fighting corruption at the highest levels of the previous Tusk government. In March 2015, under the first Tusk government, they were found guilty of exceeding their official powers by the judge linked to the corruption mafia they investigated. Subsequently, they were pardoned by the President of Poland. However, the current Tusk government does not recognize the presidential pardon and intends to hold the President liable for protecting the two former government officials and current members of the parliament. They are in prison on a hunger strike right now, and their lives are in danger.
These arrests were made in total disregard of the decision of the Polish Constitutional Court, which had previously deemed the actions against the current members of the parliament protected by immunity as illegal. A similar decision was handed down by the Supreme Court.
Unfortunately, the position of neither of these judiciary institutions essential for Polish democracy has been respected. The Speaker of the Sejm, representing the government majority, ordered the trial to be held in an unauthorized chamber of the Supreme Court, the only chamber still controlled by individuals responsible for the repression during the martial law of 1981.
A significant number of prosecutors and judges refuse to succumb to pressure from the new government to robber stamp further unlawful acts of the neo-communist junta. The latest attack was on the Prosecutor General. The leadership of the prosecutor’s office was completely unlawfully stripped of power, contrary to the law. The new Minister of Justice is attempting to obstruct the actions of independent prosecutors who investigate serious allegations against the new government.
There are dangerous signs of intimidation of private businesses as well, especially those that could be associated with initiatives unfavorable to the government. The independence of the Central Bank of Poland is under threat, and decisions of the Polish Constitutional Court are completely ignored.
For many people in Poland and around the world, it is shocking that politicians who came to power with slogans of improving democracy and the rule of law act in total disregard of those principle and driven by revenge implement standards reminiscent of those seen today in Belarus and Russia.
Poland is heading in a dangerous direction. The current Tusk government is jeopardizing the most basic civil rights and is undermining democratic standards and institutions. Such actions cannot be accepted in the name of any political plan. These actions must be met with the strong condemnation of the international community.
We, therefore, call on the leadership of the United States, the beacon of freedom and democracy in the world, to take immediate action and unequivocally condemn the totalitarian practices, gross violations of the Constitution and the rule of law, the devastation of democratic institutions, persecution of the opposition, the assault on the media and freedom of speech, and violations of human rights by the Tusk government and the former ombudsman for human rights currently serving as the Minister of Justice who makes mockery of justice and human rights.
Polonia Institute
source: niezalezna.pl
