Social Europe: Mourning Poland’s Burning Man

Late in the afternoon on October 19, a 54-year-old man outside the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw distributed several dozen copies of a letter addressed to the Polish people. Then he set himself on fire – a protest and sacrifice that called to mind the protests of Buddhist monks against the Vietnam War a half-century ago, and that of the Czech student Jan Palach against the Soviet crushing of the Prague Spring in 1969. [...]

The letter accuses the government, controlled by the Law and Justice (PiS) party, of restricting civil liberties and undermining the judiciary. Specifically, it condemns the PiS for its discrimination against immigrants, women, LGBT people, Muslims, and others, and for destroying the environment, by supporting coal-based energy, hunting, and logging in Białowieża Forest.  [...]

But the letter also implores the party’s opponents – 16% of Poles support the largest opposition party – “to remember that PiS voters are our mothers, brothers, neighbors, friends, and colleagues.” As such, they should not be vilified, but rather reminded of “the rules of democracy.” The letter concludes by calling on all Poles to “wake up” and change their government before it causes irreparable damage to the country. [...]

Meanwhile, the renowned Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland issued a strong rebuke against liberal media outlets that would attribute Piotr’s protest to mental illness. It is an “act of extreme moral laziness,” she wrote on Oko.press, to explain “such extreme civic despair and self-sacrifice as a result of depression, mental illness, and a related desire to end one’s own life.”

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