Notes from Poland: Polish cities switch off lights in protest against government’s EU budget veto

 Almost 50 Polish cities this evening turned off the lights at famous landmarks in protest against the government’s blocking of the European Union’s budget and coronavirus recovery fund, as well as against a bill that would reduce the share of tax revenue going to local authorities. [...]

All of Poland’s ten largest cities joined the blackout, including Wrocław, Łódź and Poznań. Among the smaller cities taking part was Sosnowiec, which switched off part of its EU-funded street light grid. [...]

Cities, which are mostly under opposition control, have also expressed concern at a move by the central government to cut the share of tax revenue allocated to local budgets. A bill to that effect was passed by the lower house of parliament on 28 October.

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Notes from Poland: Polish prime minister committed “gross violation of law” in organising elections, rules court

 Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, committed a “gross violation of the law” and the constitution when ordering preparations for elections earlier this year, a court has ruled. [...]

“The manner of [conducting] elections cannot be restricted by any actions of the executive branch,” wrote Rudnicki. “[Poland] cannot be considered a state of law if [state] organs infringe the provisions of the law.”

The judges also declared that the decision to hold a postal-only vote meant that “voters were not guaranteed an equal, direct and secret ballot”, reports RMF24. [...]

However, Ewa Siedlecka, a commentator for the Polityka weekly, notes that the court’s decision is mainly “symbolic”. Some organisations or individuals – such as voters whose personal data was provided to the post office – could launch civil cases. But Morawiecki and other officials are unlikely to face legal consequences, as PiS has created a system that “guarantees freedom and impunity”, she writes.

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Notes from Poland: Poland’s human rights commissioner on the state of democracy, LGBT protests and “dormant civic energy”

 Agnieszka Wądołowska: “Poland in 2020 is a completely different country than it was in 2015,” you said in the Senate in a statement summarising your term as commissioner for human rights. “Poland is no longer a constitutional democracy”, but a state of “electoral authoritarianism” and a “hybrid democracy”. What do you think we have lost in those five years? [...]

For example, with the [ruling] Law and Justice party’s anti-refugee advert, it was impossible to hold anybody who produced it accountable. The prosecutor’s office discontinued the proceedings. And the matter of the antisemitic post of a member of the National Council of the Judiciary will probably not be ruled upon, because the statute of limitations will apply in a few weeks’ time. Even though the case has been known about for years. There are many such examples. [...]

In many cases, the hardest thing is the fact that the changes stop me from helping people as I would like to. Every commissioner used to be able to take a case to the Constitutional Tribunal. Now I must make a rational judgement on whether that might not make the situation worse – because, for example, the Constitutional Tribunal legitimising a given law can make the work of the courts difficult, as they can always directly apply the constitution. [...]

There is one more thing to mention. What is happening is, in my view, a repercussion of the presidential campaign and the fact that the subject of LGBT became an electoral fuel used to heat up the atmosphere and take votes away from the [far-right] Confederation party. A moment ago, we had the Istanbul Convention on the table, now it’s LGBT rights – this all seems to me to be a political game. And I find this regrettable because one should not play with human rights. This is of course connected to a very real, concrete threat to the people who become victims of this situation.

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Notes from Poland: Polish bishops call for “clinics to help LGBT people regain natural sexual orientation”

They also call for the creation of “clinics to help people who want to regain their…natural sexual orientation”. Such “conversion therapy” has been rejected by the established medical community as unethical and harmful, and has been completely or partially banned in a number of countries. [...]

The bishops admit that this idea “stands in clear contradiction to positions regarded as scientific, as well as to so-called ‘political correctness'”. [...]

The premise that non-heterosexual orientations are a mental illness has in recent decades been rejected by leading medical bodies, including the World Health Organisation in 1990. The practice of “conversion therapy” to “cure” or “correct” such orientations has also been deemed unethical and harmful. [...]

Further countries are currently considering legislation to outlaw the practice. In 2017, the Church of England declared conversion therapy to be a “discredited” and “theologically unsound” form of “abuse”, and called on the British government to ban it.

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Notes from Poland: “No apologies, no shame”: the rise of Poland’s guerrilla LGBT activists

Various legal efforts have been made by LGBT groups to stop the vans, but have largely been unsuccessful, due to the fact that Poland’s laws against hateful and offensive speech do not cover sexual orientation or gender identity.

Although a court in Gdańsk ordered Fundacja Pro to temporarily stop using some of the slogans it claims are based on “scientific” evidence, another judge in Wrocław rejected a case against the organisation, saying that its activities are “informative”. [...]

Speaking with Notes from Poland shortly before her latest detention, Margot explained what she calls the groups’ “no apologies” approach. They have sought to “throw off the discourse of docility and shame” that she associates with the respectability politics of more moderate members of the LGBT movement. But this radicalism does not exist in a vacuum; it has “adapted to the growth of homophobia”. [...]

For some, the insult to religious feeling was a step too far; others questioned the wisdom of strategies that make LGBT people standout, preferring campaigns that present them as “normal people”. One interviewee said they should be looking for issues that they have in common with religion, such as the idea of love.

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Notes from Poland: Polish courts annul “LGBT ideology-free zones”, finding they violate constitution

Polish courts have annulled two of the “zones free from LGBT ideology” that have been declared by many local authorities around Poland. Judges found that they violate the constitution, which bans discrimination and requires equal treatment. [...]

The court noted that the anti-LGBT resolution violated Article 32 of Poland’s constitution, which stipulates that “all persons shall be equal before the law” and “have the right to equal treatment by public authorities”, and that “no one shall be discriminated against in political, social or economic life for any reason whatsoever”. [...]

Last month, the European Commission wrote to the heads of five Polish provinces requesting an explanation regarding such resolutions. In the letter, the Commission reminded local authorities that the activities of beneficiaries of European funds must be in accordance with European values and may not violate any European laws.

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Notes from Poland: Most Poles religious but few “strongly committed” to their faith, new data show

Just over 60% of Poles display “religious commitment”, according to new data released by Statistics Poland (GUS), a government agency. But just 5.5% of them are “strongly committed” to their faith, while 23% are “moderately committed” and 33% are “weakly committed”. Meanwhile, some 34% of people are “uncommitted” (meaning that they have a religion, but are not religiously active), while the remainder, 5%, are outside of any religion, reports Onet. [...]

Katarzyna Zielińska, a sociologist at the Jagiellonian University, told Notes from Poland that, although the new figures do not directly indicate any change in religiosity, the wider trend observed in recent years – shown in data from the CBOS polling institute – has shown a decline in terms of declarations of practices as well as religious belonging. [...]

The new Statistics Poland data also show significant differences between age groups, Onet notes. The 25-34 age group is the least religious – more than half of respondents in this group (51%) are either religiously uncommitted or outside of any religion, and just 17% are either strongly or moderately committed. [...]

This has been confirmed by CBOS’s data – which show that the proportion of school leavers declaring themselves believers has dropped from 81% to 63% in a decade – and also by the Pew Research Center, which has found Poland to have the biggest decline in religiosity between the oldest and youngest generations.

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