Law and Justice Takes Revenge for Polish Women's Strike | Reporting Democracy - Balkan Insight
The leaders of the Women’s Strike movement face the harshest sentences of up to 8 years in prison for their actions last year in defence of women’s rights, though an estimated 4,000 Polish citizens were fined or brought before the courts for organizing or participating in the protests.
It was on November 17 last year, two weeks after a previous women’s rights demonstration in the main square in the Polish town of Krapkowice and on the eve of the next one, when two police officers turned up at the door of Maciej Rauhut’s house.
One of them was in uniform, the other in plain clothes. Maciej’s mother opened the door and told them Maciej was in his room, taking part in an online lesson.
Maciej’s relationship with the schooling system was not easy; he was often ill and missed many classes, but he did well in his final exams and had been admitted to high school. His dream is to study law at Jagiellonian University – something he put at risk when he took to the streets for the first time in his life last year to demonstrate together with 2,500 people from his town over a ruling by the Constitutional Court in October 2020 that virtually outlawed abortion in the country.
Maciej Rauhut. Photo: Private archive
“Right at the door, they told my mother that I could be charged with eight years in prison because of ‘illegal activity’ observed on my Facebook profile,” says the 18-year-old. “I was informed that sharing an event connected with Strajk Kobiet [Women’s Strike] constituted incitement to commit a criminal offense, i.e. taking part in an illegal gathering. They ordered me not to participate in the protest the following day.”
“I told them I was not guilty of any crime – sharing a post is not equivalent to incitement to commit a crime. Forty minutes later, the policemen arrived at my school and told the principal that I was an organiser of an illegal gathering. I had to explain everything all over again,” says Maciej.
When Maciej described his encounter with the police on Facebook, the protest scheduled for the following day was cancelled. The teenager showed up with a group of friends in front of the police station, accompanied by journalists working for the independent news channel TVN24.
“When the policemen realised that there was a media presence in front of their station, they only peeked through the windows and hid behind the curtains,” says Maciej.
Even so, on the same day, the police referred Maciej’s case to a family court on the charge of “demoralising minors by inciting them to participate in a gathering through Facebook”. A week later, on November 25, the court rejected the case, citing a failure to find proper grounds to initiate such proceedings. Maciej and his mother wrote a complaint about the policemen’s conduct.
“Until that day, I had a lot of respect for the Polish police. I believed that police officers had a mission to serve the state and its citizens. Now I see that the police are at the service of only one citizen – Jaroslaw Kaczynski,” he says, referring to the leader of Law and Justice (PiS) party, the conservative-populist ruling party that has illegally hijacked the Constitutional Court by stuffing it full of allies like current president, Judge Julia Przylebska.
Maciej is not alone. Many Poles have become increasingly dismayed at their criminal justice system, as the government directed prosecutors and police officers to punish participants of the nationwide protests against the ant-abortion law that mushroomed across the country over the past year.
By the estimates of the movement that drove those protests, Ogolnopolski Strajk Kobiet (All-Poland Women’s Strike), about 4,000 people across Poland have suffered at the hands of Polish law enforcement bodies after the series of protests in defence of women’s rights.
Women leaders await trial
Marta Lempart, leader of Women’s Strike, tells BIRN that since October 2020 she has seen a dozen proceedings initiated against her and others on charges of organising illegal gatherings.
“I was accused of insulting a police officer, breaking anti-COVID regulations, illegal occupation of a traffic lane and littering. In July, the prosecution service pressed charges against other women organising the Women’s Strike and me, accusing us of ‘causing an event that endangers the life or health of many people’ and ‘causing an epidemiological hazard… by organising and leading demonstrations in October, November and December 2020 on the streets of Warsaw,” Lempart relates.
“We could be punished with eight years of imprisonment. We await the trial date,” she adds.
In Lempart’s opinion, the government is engaging in open repression using law enforcement officers to punish and deter organisers and participants of the protests, despite publicly claiming in the media that Polish democracy is in good shape because anyone can take to the streets to protest.
“Participants of anti-government protests could face serious consequences. Arrests, detentions at police stations with no access to lawyers, absurd charges and submitting to courts motions for penalties that are nothing short of open repression – these measures are aimed at deterring the general public from taking part in gatherings and protesting against the government,” she tells BIRN. “This limits the possibility of protest.”
The most egregious acts aimed at preventing the exercising of rights and civil freedoms guaranteed by the constitution, she says, concern using law enforcement officers to threaten and hound teenagers. “The only thing that matters for this government is complete subjugation of society,” she says.
Pushed and shoved
Daria Chetnik. Photo: Private archive
One of those teenagers is 17-year-old student Daria Chetnik. In the northern Polish town of Olsztyn on November 16 last year, under cloudy skies and in drizzly weather, a “spontaneous walk” was launched in the city centre against the anti-abortion law, attended by no more than 30 people.
“Until then, I had marched in protest only sporadically, but the Constitutional Court’s ruling really got on my nerves. On that day, nothing could stop me from being there,” the teenager tells BIRN. “We gathered at 5:00pm. Two police cars were already waiting in front of the city hall in Olsztyn. We kept the mandatory social distance; I was holding the Women’s Strike flag.”
Two policemen approached her. Daria produced her temporary ID card and asked them to state the legal and factual grounds for their intervention. She noted that the policemen did not have name badges. As legal grounds for their intervention, the policemen mentioned Article 54, i.e. a breach of order regulation. One of the police officers took a photo of her ID card for “documentation purposes.”
“They took my personal data and left,” Daria recounts. “I was still with a group of friends at the square when a few minutes later we were approached by another police officer who threatened us with submitting a motion to court to impose a fine if we did not leave the area. ‘Do it,’ I responded. ‘I shall,’ he answered and called for his colleagues. He told me to get in the police car with them. I was afraid; they were getting more aggressive.”
Andrzej Jurkun from the Police Headquarters in Olsztyn tells BIRN that the officers were acting on the basis of, among other laws, the Act on Proceedings in Cases against Minors and of the Regulation of the National Police Headquarters on “methods and ways of carrying out tasks by police officers with regard to counteracting demoralisation and criminal activity among minors and actions taken for the benefit of minors.”
He refused to answer the question of why and on what charge the policemen apprehended and forced the girl into the police car.
Leader of the Polish National Women’s Strike Marta Lempart (L) and members of the Left political coalition Monika Falej (R) take part in a protest against the tightening of the abortion law in Elblag, Poland, 05 November 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/Tomasz Waszczuk
Monika Falej, an MP from the Left party in Olsztyn, participated in the same demonstration. When she noticed the growing tension between the police officers and the then-16-year-old, she told the policemen that she was a legal guardian of the girl and that she would walk her home. The policemen did not believe the MP and forced Daria into the police car.
Daria continues: “They were aggressive – they pushed and pulled me a few times, then they shoved me into an unmarked police car. Inside, there were three men in plain clothes. I did not know who they were because none of them introduced himself. They drove me home; one of the policemen told my mother that they were referring my case to court on the grounds of ‘demoralisation’.”
“Once at home, I lost my nerve. For a few hours, I was distressed and sobbed into my pillow,” she admits.
Daria only went to another protest two weeks later, even though demonstrations were then happening every few days. “During the demonstration, I stayed at the rear of the march. When the police blocked the march, I left the crowd and watched the events unfold from a safe distance, as if I was embarrassed by the slogans that I was shouting so proudly,” she says. “That is known as the ‘freeze effect’.”
State prosecutor involved in reprisals
The local and foreign media have recounted a myriad of cases of Polish police officers abusing their powers during these protests in defence of women’s rights.
A protester holds a Women’s Strike symbol ‘lightning’ in front of riot police cordon during a demonstration under the slogan ‘We’re going for freedom. We’re going for everything!’ organized by Women’s Strike in Warsaw, Poland, 13 December 2020.Photo: EPA-EFE/MARCIN OBARA
The police’s main justification for stifling the demonstrations were that they were illegal. As grounds for their actions, they initially cited a law and later an act of parliament regarding anti-COVID-19 measures that sought to introduce a ban on gatherings.
Many lawyers challenged this ban, claiming that it infringed on rights and freedoms guaranteed under the constitution. The government could limit them only by introducing a state of emergency, which it had not done. This position was supported by a majority of the courts before which participants of the protests were later tried.
The police also resorted to heavy-handed tactics like using tear gas against protestors. Despite showing their parliamentary ID cards and enjoying immunity from prosecution, the MPs Magdalena Biejat and Barbara Nowacka had tear gas sprayed in their faces.
Journalists were attacked, too. A news photographer from Gazeta Wyborcza was tear gassed, while Agata Grzybowska, a contributor to the same newspaper, was arrested and charged with breaching the personal inviolability of a police officer for taking a photo of him.
During another protest, members of the police anti-terrorist unit, in plain clothes, infiltrated a peacefully protesting crowd. At one point, they started tussling with a group of demonstrators. One of the policemen took out an expandable baton and hit a man with it twice.
Adam Bodnar, the then-Polish commissioner for human rights, or ombudsman, criticised such police brutality on many occasions. During a debate organised by opposition senators, he underlined that he was concerned by the “mass checks of ID papers of persons who were merely walking in the direction of a demonstration, the kettling of demonstrators, driving arrested people outside of Warsaw, and abusing the use of tear gas and batons, in particular, the more dangerous expandable batons.”
Bodnar, in particular, took issue with measures taken by the police on November 18, when the anti-terrorist units in plain clothes infiltrated the demonstrators. “The protesters had every right to be afraid,” said Bodnar. He also criticised the officers for making journalists’ work more difficult and the attacks against MPs who supported the Women’s Strike.
A separate issue raised by Bodnar concerned incidents that took place in police cars and short-term detention facilities. “The use of tear gas, beatings, mocking, humiliating, even kicks in the face and stomach – the situation has gone too far. What is taking place on the streets of Polish cities is alarming. The police have lost a lot of public trust,” he concluded.
State Prosecutor Bogdan Swieczkowski, the right hand man of the hardline justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, even became personally involved in reprisals against the protesters.
A few days after the first protest march on October 22, he sent a letter to all the regional prosecutor offices obliging them to inform him about every registered proceeding connected with the Women’s Strike.
“Prosecution offices were obliged to report about every decision to open pre-trial proceedings, about every refusal to open such proceedings, about pressing charges and outcomes of the pre-trial proceedings. That was a clear case of putting pressure on prosecutors. No one was willing to open such proceedings, but we felt pressured,” one anonymous prosecutor told Gazeta Wyborcza.
At the request of the state prosecutor, police officers in Szczecin demanded the disclosure of the personal data of the heads of the Marshall’s Office of the West-Pomeranian region, the body that governs the region, who at the end of October gave their female employees a day off so they could attend a demonstration in defence of their rights.
Courts deliver justice
Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash
Over the ensuing months after the start of the protests in October 2020, protesters all across Poland received summons ordering them to appear in court in connection with motions for fines and penalties submitted by the police or with charges filed against them by prosecutors.
Although precise numbers are hard to come by, the courts have by a significant margin chosen to throw out the motions from police to impose fines, leading to suspicions that most are merely filed as a form of intimidation rather an honest attempt to seek justice.
Examples include two activists Zuzanna Kozak – who was taking her final high school exams that year and her older friend Aleksandra Filipiak – that appeared before a court in Poznan in June 2020.
Shouting through a loudspeaker, Zuzanna told a crowd of protestors gathered in Poznam: “December 13 [2020] marks 39 years since martial law was imposed in Poland. I have an uncanny feeling that what we learned in history lessons is becoming our reality. I find the comment that ‘General [Wojciech] Jaruzelski introduced martial law in Poland, and Jaroslaw Kaczynski is at war with his citizens’ quite pertinent. He is waging war against anyone who does not share his opinions; in fact, against every citizen.”
Because Zuzanna spoke at the beginning and at the end of the protest, the police concluded that she must have been an organiser. They pressed the same charge against her friend Aleksandra. During questioning at the police station, neither admitted any guilt. The police subsequently submitted to court a motion to levy a penalty of 200 zloty on each of them.
The court discontinued the proceedings on the grounds that COVID-19 regulations on gatherings were defective. “The court is of the opinion that imposing any limitations on the freedom of assembly may only be introduced by way of an act of parliament. An act that banned gatherings was not in force at the time. The court doubts if the ban on gatherings introduced by the regulation were binding at the time. The defendants had the right to believe that they were participating in a legal gathering,” Judge Lukasz Kalawski explained in his decision.
Amelia Wieczorek, a 17-year-old from Barlinek in the West Pomeranian region, was brought before the court on the same charges. The police accused her of organising three demonstrations. During questioning at the police station, a police officer suggested ending her case with an official caution, but the 17-year-old would not accept such a punishment. The police referred the case to court, which discontinued proceedings.
In fact, BIRN can find only one case of a court sentencing a female citizen for organising an illegal protest – and even that was eventually dismissed. The district court in Limanowa, in the Lesser Poland region, in January this year punished a 17-year-old Malgorzata with an official reprimand for allegedly organising a protest in this town. The sentence was passed following proceedings without any participation of the parties. The girl filed an objection, which led to full court proceedings. After the hearing, the court discontinued the proceedings. The police appealed against the sentence, but the Court of Appeal issued a final judgment acquitting the 17-year-old.
Any final doubts on this case were resolved by the Supreme Court, which ruled on July 1 that the ban on gatherings had been introduced in the preceding year without an appropriate legal basis, by way of a regulation instead of an act of parliament, and against the constitution, which guarantees the freedom of assembly.
Some of the cases against the protesters are still pending, though. And the most serious cases, those of the three leaders of the movement and the organizers of the protests, who face up to eight years in prison, are still ahead of us.
For Maciej, Daria, Amelia and others the nightmare might be over. For others like Marta, it is only just beginning.
source: https://balkaninsight.com/2021/10/22/law-and-justice-takes-revenge-for-polish-womens-strike/
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