Poland – from bad to worse
by Baroness Deech • • 5 Comments
I have written on previous occasions about Poland’s slide towards authoritarianism and its reversion to its past system of dictatorship (sometimes there is little to choose between the fascist and communist regimes, especially from the perspective of the oppressed). http://lordsoftheblog.net/2016/02/18/poland-is-the-problem-continued/ and http://lordsoftheblog.net/2016/01/23/poland-is-the-problem/
The situation is now even worse, to the extent that it would not be unfair to compare Poland with Erdogan’s Turkey, in terms of the abandonment of the rule of law in those countries, save that Turkey has put many more officials in prison. An excellent study of the lawlessness of Poland has been published by the Oxford University Foundation for Law Justice & Society and can be read here http://www.fljs.org/sites/www.fljs.org/files/publications/The%20Constitutional%20Court%20of%20Poland.pdf.
In brief – and this is all rather complicated – the government and the supreme court of Poland, its Constitutional Court, are at odds with each other. The Court had the ability to strike down laws that were incompatible with the Polish Constitution (like in the USA). The extreme right wing Law & Justice Party (now that’s a misnomer, if ever there was one, as will be seen) has responded to the unwelcome independence of this Court by passing laws interfering with the appointment and dismissal of judges, politicising those appointments, restricting the publication of judgments, ignoring inconvenient judgments, meddling with criminal trial procedure, and dismissing some prosecutors, apparently because they were seen as anti-government. Each time the Court invalidates a new law as unconstitutional, the government retaliates by passing more laws curbing with the Court.
The Polish government has also abolished the independence of public radio and TV, taken control of their governing boards, and ignored a Court finding that laws restricting the media were invalid. Further new laws allow secret surveillance of all foreigners, mass night searches and the blocking of websites. One may well ask, is this more reminiscent of the communist regime of the past or of the Nazi occupiers?
And this is a country, Poland, throwing its weight around in the EU, the biggest recipient of European handouts. Its former Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, who presided over his state’s stagnation and discontent from 2007-14, is, almost unbelievably, President of the European Council (although opposed as such by the current Polish government). He is the one telling the UK what its obligations are under EU law as we Brexit. The EU tut tuts over Poland, but that is about as far as it goes. Likewise there is little it is minded to do about Hungary, which is getting rid of its distinguished Central European University and is also flouting many of the human rights laws on which Europe, unjustifiably, prides itself. Hungary sticks up for Poland, thick as thieves, so as to ensure that neither of them will suffer at the hands of the EU. So these are more good reasons for us to leave this institution which cannot prevent this decline in freedom, and within which we were powerless to stop it happening.
PS A recent conference at the European Parliament in Brussels chastised Poland over its failure to make restitution of property seized from its citizens by the Nazis and Communists, a situation that has lasted for 70 years. I will be surprised however if the EU is able to force Poland to abandon its resistance to justice.
Dear Lady Deech
Thank you for bringing out the truth about human rights violations in EU countries. Hope this will persuade enough parliamentarians in the EU to take appropriate action.
Re return of land to owners
Sri Lanka is extremely slowly returning land, from huge swathes grabbed as High SEcurity Zone 25yrs ago, to the owners. though the war came to an end 8yrs ago, proving that the ”end of war” was merely end of military assaults. ………
The “truth” about “human-rights” ? They need to be based upon “Needs.
You
(we collectively, that is – facilitated by the baroness and such potential sub-emulables as perhaps your self)
need to scrutinise the basic mind-function honesties and fitnesses-for-purpose that are insidiously ruling us billions of ordinary one-human-living-capable world-people, by “mindless-suppressions and manipulations” .
Since a “Right” is a legal-support to satisfy a Need – it is the Needs Pyramid that is one-way-downwards, deliberately-dictatorially-oligarchicly, kept skewed and underminingly-“reinforced-and- reinforcing”
and in dire need of radical reform –
but every civilisation is deprived of public-inaccessibility of All Human-Needs to Participatively Democratic Public-Prioritisation
and is instead blindly subjected to a deludedly and deludingly fallable-pyramid of values, constituted and constructed to upwards-increasingly aggrandize and luxury-pamper minorities of individual human-beings as being each many human-beings –
thus billions of equal-human-beings are condemned to survive totally unaided, with hundreds-of-millions having only diseased and polluted water to drink and wash in and irrigate crops with,
whilst the further “peak” millions of falsely-self-styled world and national “leaders” wallow in ease, protection, and plenty, upon falsely-skewed multiple-human-livings.
——–
Your assumption of the “primacy of land-ownership” is also flawed,
in that every-thing on this Lifesupportive-Planet needs to be served “In-Common” with collectivity in both response-ability and respons-ibility.
Land, and indeed all civilisational-infrastructure including personal-housing, is of common-responsibility, and needs neither “family” nor “individual” ownership, but “collective-stewardship” –
based upon its occupant’s’ –
“sustainworthiness” and “fitness-for-purpose”.
————–
Thus we need to start emulably making our-self, our-neighbourhood-selves, and our National-Self and Civilisation, much more palpably and peacefully sustain-worthy-ing –
before calling any other pot or kettle “black”, “rotten” or “going from bad to worse”.
And is this how they are doing it? The largest march in Poland ever taken. Something not shown on British news. I wonder why that is?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_BjPy19bYs
If this is the movement you are raising on this thread, then it is happening right across Europe. They are marching to protect their culture and their lives. It cannot be rolled back as they feel they have been betrayed by the people who lead them into what is called Globalisation. They see Globalisation as the end of their beloved civilisation and the roots of their existence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yvh7CXcZiUw
And Fox news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UfECbPnF8w
” (The EU) … within which we were powerless to stop
(countries such as Poland, Hungary, Turkey)
‘suffering at the hands of the EU’
and doing away with their own Rule of Law
as well as becoming Repressive (such as of freedom-of-speech, radio & TV).
We in Britain have a Rule of Law but it is a bit of a “stuck-one-end see-saw’”, and doesn’t recognise such an essential life-entity as holistic-health-building,
is heavily biased “upwards” to the already rich, powerful and ‘prestigious’;
has no Individual Human Development right and service for every person of our 64 million heads;
and de facto discriminates against the low-incomed, disadvantaged and disabled “minorities”.
Britain has no need, nor right, to be a “pot calling other kettles ‘black’ “
Dear Lady Deech
This explains why the EU discontinued GSP+ to Sri Lanka in 2010 saying that it did not conform to its Human Rights criteria but has given back it last month though same human rights violations continue under the new government.