Freedom of assembly and speech has been limited in Poland.
Enough police and state repression!
The
Anarchist Federation and the Polish Anarchist Black Cross published its first
report on 21st of December 2004. In it, attention was drawn to the fact that over
the last few years, the actions of many different political and social groups
that openly protest against the Polish government's policies are subject to bigger
and bigger repressions, by the police and court apparata. This phenomenon is not
a set of isolated instances but is occuring on a mass scale. For the past 3-4
years many activists from the anarchist, antiwar, radical left wing, workers'
and ecological movements have been put on trial. It is easy to see not only the
rising number of "political" cases but also how the courts are handing
down more and more severe verdicts. Today the number of legal proceedings is even
hard to count, however, we can mention these examples:
1) Several people are charged in connection with a demonstration against the
war in Chechnya which took place at Lawica Airport in Poznan in 2004. They are
now standing trial in Poznan.
2) A few dozen defendants are charged in connection with a demonstration against
Vladimir Putin's visit to Cracow in January 2005. They are now standing trial
in Cracow.
3) One person accused in connection with a critical mass bicycle demonstration
in Poznan is standing trial now in Poznan.
4) One person was convicted of charges stemming from a demonstration of the
Nurse and Midwife's Trade Union in Warsaw in 2000. He was fined and failure
to pay will result in arrest.
5) 11 people are accused of various charges in connection with a demonstration
which took place in Warsaw on the 16th of May 2005 during the 3rd Council of
Europe Summit.
We assess the number of people recently repressed by the police to be about
80. This figure is based on the number of recent detentions.
We don't precisely know the number of cases against workers' protesters. For
example, 20 people were arrested on the 22nd of October 2002 after a demonstration
of shipyard workers. 11 of them were charged. No less than 20 people, but maybe
even as much as 70 have been charged after the protests in Ozarow on 27-30th
of November 2002.
The reason for the government's repressions is undoubtedly an increase in
the number of social conflicts (for example the number of demonstrations, according
to police statistics, rose from 315 in 2001, to 2054 in 2003, and 1476 in 2004).
There are so many that the government apparently can not deal with them. So
it tries to restrict the freedom of assembly and speech. It has happened at
two levels:
Firstly, officials have taken steps, using formal and legal procedures, in
order to reduce the freedom of demonstration. During the past few years we could
notice many examples of such behavior; we'll mention here just some of them:
1) The mayor of Poznan prohibited 11 demonstrations by the group Committee
Free Caucasus (Komitet Wolny Kaukaz- KWK) which protests against the war in
Chechnya. Every time KWK activists demonstrated in spite of the illegal prohibition,
they were repressed by the police and then the court. On the 30th of September
2004, the Main Administrative Court (NSA) ruled all prohibitions given by the
mayor as illegal. It announced that he had no right to prohibit anyone from
demonstrating. The court referred to the 57th article of the Polish constitution
which ensures everybody the freedom to organize peaceful assemblies and to take
part in them. The court noted in its decision that "the constitution ensures
the institution of freedom of assembly, not only the right to organize demonstrations".
2) In the beginning of 2004 the parliament tried to introduce an amendment
to the act on public assembly which would forbid people who cannot be identified
because of appearance from taking part in demonstrations. It would also hold
the organizer of a protest responsible for damages made by any member of the
demonstration or made shortly afterwards. The official reason for this planned
change of law was to ensure the safety of the members of protests but in fact
the government wanted to limit the rights to demonstrate. That amendment was
planned to be introduced shortly before a protest against the European Economic
Forum in Warsaw 2004. The Polish Constitutional Tribunal found it in contradiction
to the Polish constitution.
3) The local authorities, mainly connected with "Prawo and Sprawiedliwosc"
(Law And Justice- the political party that won last month's parliament elections
and whose representative became the Polish president two weeks ago) and "Liga
Polskich Rodzin" (the League of Polish Families - a radical right-wing
party) tried to restrict the right to demonstrate for "Equality Parades"
(gay rights) many times in Poznan, Warsaw and Cracow. The most glaring example
took place on the 11th of June 2005 in Warsaw where, despite the fact that Lech
Kaczynski (the present Polish president) banned the parade, about 3 thousand
people marched through Warsaw as an act of civil disobedience.
4) The police use surveillance and intimidation against activists on a mass
scale, under the pretext of preventive actions. A well-known case took place
at the beginning of 2004 just before the alterglobalist demonstration against
the European Economic Forum. The police raided dozens of activists at their
homes and at workplaces, put pressure on them and provoked them in order to
intimidate and discourage them from participating in the legal protest. On the
29th of April 2004, the police abused their power and stopped buses of activists
from Poznan, Elk and other cities from going to protest in Warsaw. In addition,
border officials didn't let in two buses of Hungarian activists going to that
protest.
Secondly, in many individual and specific cases, actions are taken that restrict
freedom of assembly and speech; the police and judicial administration use the
most glaring provocations and base abuses. This includes employing restrictions
to discourage people from taking part in demonstrations and using brutal and
violent police interventions during protests in order to provoke protestors
and by this creating situations which can be used against them on trial. It
is common that the police (often without any evidence) accuses protestors of
aggression or assault. Courts usually believe policemen. They consider policemen's
testimony to be more credible than the defendant's because police officers have
no reason to lie. Of course the rule of credibility of a policeman's testimony
in which Polish courts seem to fully believe has no rational psychological and
sociological sense. On the contrary, there are many cases when policemen has
lied in court and it is in his interest as it is a consequence of an intentional
strategy of abusing violence.
It results in:
1) Criminalizing people who protest against the policies of the authorities
2) Police actions getting more and more violent and sentences of the courts
stricter and stricter
3) Charges not being commensurate with situations and often against completely
innocent people.
We can mention many examples of those situations. For instance:
1) Proceedings against Andrzej Smosarski have been completed in a court in
Warsaw. Andrzej Smosarski was invited to take part in a protest of the Trade
Union of Midwives and Nurses on December 2000 in Warsaw. The demonstration was
dispersed by police force and demonstrators were divided into small groups surrounded
by a police cordon. Suddenly, Andrew noticed that one of the women required
immediate medical treatment. Despite his requests, police officers refused to
let the woman contact ambulances standing nearby. Seeing that, the group of
demonstrators, with Andrew among them, started to push forward and finally broke
through the cordon of police officers in order to help the sick woman. As a
result of that, Andrew and another agitator were accused of assault on a policeman
(kicking him in his chest), although nothing like that happened.
In Andrew's presence, the police officers agreed upon their own false version
of the whole accident. The lower court and the court of appeals found him guilty
of violating a policeman's physical "untouchability". Smosarski was
sentenced to a 3700 zloty fine which can be commuted to 100 days of imprisonment.
With false accusations and a severe sentence, the judges and police obviously
want to silence social critique and threaten other activists
2) Agnieszka Wasieczko was one of 11 people arrested after a demonstration
in Warsaw on 16th of May 2005 against the 3rd Council of Europe Summit. They
were offended by the police, who even in the police car didn't want to give
a reason and the legal basis for their detention. After arrival at the police
station they were kept in a garage belonging to the headquarters. Afterwards
they were examined in a tent. Every attempt to resist was suppressed. Detainees
were pulled, pushed, beaten and strangled. One of them was thrown on a table,
had his head hit and had got a black eye. All were chained to chairs by their
right hand. Policemen took photographs and fingerprints. Almost all irregularities
committed by the police during the detention were afterwards taken by the court
as justifiable. Ironically, Agnieszka Wasieczko was accused of "kicking
and hitting a policeman in the face and violating his corporal inviolability",
and "in the same place, by shouting: "you are fucked up" she
wanted to force the policemen to stop the actions", and finally that "she
insulted the police officer by using words commonly known as offensive".
For this she may be sentenced for 3 years of imprisonment. Agnieszka firmly
denies that any of these events took place during the detention.
3) The organizers the demonstration planned on 26th of January 2005 against
Vladimir Putin's visit in Cracow reported the protest to the Town Council the
24th of January. The Town Council rejected their application because it was
"too late". Despite this, on the 26th of January, the protest of human
rights protestors took place. It started peacefully till several officers shouted:
"we'll take him!" and tried to take one demonstrator who carried a
Chechen flag. Being surprised by the officers' assault, other members of the
protest decided to help and to shelter the beaten demonstrator. The reaction
of the police was that several people were pulled on the snow, kicked in the
legs, had their arms twisted and hair torn out. Taking out one demonstrator,
the police attacked the next person in a similar way. According to the protest
participants, outside observers and even the media, which wrote a statement
about the aggressive behavior of the police, the police reaction was not justified.
What is more, we can suppose the brutal intervention was intentional in order
to change the image of protesting people from peaceful demonstrators to "dangerous
hooligans". Demonstrators did not use violence or did not call for violence,
just chanted slogans, which didn't offend anybody. Policemen individually said
to the protesters to finish the meeting, but nobody heard a call to disperse
announced through a police megaphone or in another official legal way. The police
didn't let protesters finish the protest and disperse on their own but created
a cordon around protest participants and did not inform them about anything.
Half an hour later, individuals, after being identified, were taken straight
to the police cars. People who didn't have any documents were immediately taken
into custody. The whole action finished at 7, when the last frozen and drenched
person was released. Over 30 protesters were detained. The police officers did
not allow detainees the possibility of writing a complaint about the conditions
of detention. They also they didn't give reasons for detention and didn't give
copies of the proceedings. In the meantime, a few new policemen appeared for
their shift at the police station, who officially were recorded as the arresting
officers although they weren't. At least two detainees weren't allow to see
the doctor. The police took pictures of all the detainees without permission
and accusation, which is unlawful. People opposed were dragged to the place
where photographs were taken by force. Not everybody received a warm meal during
the day, just a cup of tea, although they were wet and frozen from dragging
through puddles and snow during the intervention. Those who wanted a vegetarian
meal got only several slices of bread. Two hours after being released from the
police station, one detainee fainted a few times. She was immediately taken
to the hospital where doctors recognized exhaustion of the body caused by starvation
and stress. At the beginning, the police accused 33 people, but finally they
decided to send the cases of 6 people to court: Iwona Bojarczuk, accused of
pushing away the hands of an officer; Jan Sawicz, accused of pushing away an
officer's hands; Marek Kurzyniec, accused of waving hands and pushing against
an officer; Monika Gilowska, accused of waving her hands in front of an officer;
Grzegorz Sobieszka, accused of waving his hands and legs, making detention difficult
by kicking police car's doors, kicking an officer in a head and insulting an
officer by using vulgar words; Karolina Wisniewska, accused of having illegal
drugs. Claims of human rights abuses against the prisoners include: throwing
people into water despite the sub-freezing temperatures; kicking people in the
genitals, pulling their hair (dreadlocks) in order to exert pain, throwing two
women to the ground and putting their knees on the women's backs despite no
violence from the side of the protestors.
4) On 26th of November 2004 cyclists organized a "critical mass"
bicycle protest in Poznan. From the very beginning, several police cars appeared
and officers subjected the cyclists to a routine control. The police made a
list of cyclists, who decided to continue their protest. No policeman informed
demonstrators in any way that that demonstration was illegal. Near the Freedom
Square, the police cars freely overtook cyclists but then they blocked the road.
Policemen bluntly threw people off from their bicycles, threw the detained on
bonnets of the police cars and on a fence. They were offended, pulled, kicked,
persecuted and demeaned. Undoubtedly the provocation was part of an intervention
scenario. A senior officer threatened the detained not only verbally and young
policemen followed his example. They used words: "paws on fence fucker
and legs wide spread, other way I'll kick your ass". Every objection or
movement of the detainees ended with threat of accusation about making difficulties
to the actions of police. In a short time tens of people were standing along
the fence with wide spread legs and hands on the fence. Policemen did not react
when a protester invoked the law on police procedure. In such circumstances
none of cyclists accepted fines and all became arrested. Persecutions and humiliations
were repeated at the police station. A few hours later almost all demonstrators
were free but they would face the trial at local court. But Slawomir Kmiotek
was detained on the charge of punishable threat, only because he rebuked the
police officers during the intervention that they had used means inadequate
to the situation. At the police headquarters, in the accuser's presence, policemen
established their testimonies. Slawomir Kmiotek may be sentenced for 3 years
of imprisonment.
In all these cases the fact that intervening public order services do not
respect freedom of assembly and speech has a fundamental meaning. The public
is rarely informed about repressive methods of police actions. The media sometimes
bow before the illusion of "the state of law" and they believe the
police and prosecutor's excuses. Meanwhile, year by year we come closer and
closer to the authoritarian system, where democratic standards are established
by the police officers and the officials of the state administration. Under
the pretext of crime and terrorism, they try to force legal solutions which
will be ruthlessly used against the political opposition.
The Anarchist Federation section Poznan (Federacja Anarchistyczna sekcja
Poznan)
The Anarchist Black Cross (Anarchistyczny Czarny Krzyz)
23.10.2005
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