Poland

Poland’s hard-right government, previously flagging in the polls, is using the crisis to stir up patriotic support. It has shown itself willing to match Lukashenka’s cynicism and absolute disregard for human life. The militaristic narrative of refugee pushbacks, presented by the government as defending Polish borders against hybrid war, is based on and feeding into racist and xenophobic tropes of Poland as the “bulwark of Christendom”, combined with playing on the fears of imperial appetites of Russia. This allows them to dehumanise refugees: presenting them as either a direct danger (for...

In the Morning Star of 18 November, former Straight Left ultra-Stalinist Nick Wright, now rehabilitated into the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) and a regular contributor to the paper, had a lengthy article headed “The truth about immigration waits at the Polish border” While rightly condemning Poland and the EU over the plight of the people at the border, Wright glosses over Lukashenko’s cynical manipulation of desperate migrants in his efforts to destabilise the EU (while his master Putin gloats from the sidelines), and reports of Belarusian troops forcibly turning back migrants attempting...

Speaking about the thousands of refugees stranded without shelter on the Poland-Belarus border, a Polish comrade told us: “There was a pregnant refugee, I think from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Polish border guards took this woman by her hands a legs and threw her back over the border like a sack of potatoes. She lost the pregnancy. The border guards have been made like gods, with power of life and death over people. “The persecution of the migrants divides people in the area. It is a very conservative region, and many are deeply hostile. But then there are people with good hearts who...

There are a number of films which depict aspects of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, including Jacob the Liar (Peter Kassovitz, 1974), The Pianist (Roman Polanski, 2002) and Run Boy Run (Pepe Danquart, 2013). However, I want to highlight what I think is the best film of the Polish anti-fascist resistance films: Kanal, by Andrzej Wajda (made in 1957), which actually shows the later Warsaw Uprising of 1944. In many ways it is a harrowing film; a band of Polish resistance fighters are trapped and the Nazi forces are closing in on them. Driven to desperation they devise a scheme to escape...

On Sunday 17 October, Polish groups in Britain are organising a protest at the Polish Embassy (4pm, 47 Portland Place, London W1) about the Polish government’s refusal to allow entry to asylum seekers caught on the Poland-Belarus border. They is their statement. We protest against the violation of Polish and international law by the Polish authorities by using illegal push-backs against people who are in the area under a state of emergency, and who are seeking asylum in Poland or safe passage through Poland. These people are not illegal! What is illegal is pushing adults and children into the...

On 27th January, a near-total ban on abortion came into effect across Poland, three months after a ruling by the country ’s constitutional court. Poland already had one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, but the new law - which removed severe foetal abnormalities from the list of exemptions - was seen as totemic, and part of a more generalised assault by the ruling Law and Justice Party (or PiS - short for Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) against Poland’s democratic institutions and minorities. In response to it, over the course of October and November, gigantic demonstrations gripped the...

Polish Women’s Strike reports that 14 people were detained Thursday 29 January, on the second night of protests against Poland’s near total ban on abortion, held despite a prohibition on public gatherings due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Poland’s constitutional court ruled in October to ban abortions in cases of foetuses with fatal abnormalities. The implementation of the court ruling was delayed by the October-November wave of protest. The ruling finally became law on Wednesday 28 January, triggering a new wave of protests. The constitutional court argued that allowing abortion when there are...

There are probably no films (except documentaries) that directly engage with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. However, its devastating effect on Poland, when the country was carved up between Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, can be starkly seen in Katyn (2007) by Polish director Andrzej Wajda. As Polish refugees flee eastward from the Nazis they attempt to cross a bridge, only to meet refugees fleeing in the opposite direction from Russian troops. In the mayhem a reservist Polish officer is separated from his family. He joins his unit but is captured by the Nazis and handed over to the...

Poland’s right wing Law and Justice party (PiS) government has delayed implementation of the court ruling that would outlaw almost all abortion, after a wave of protests and direct action. Michał Dworczyk, the head of the prime minister’s office, told Polish media: “There is a discussion going on, and it would be good to take some time for dialogue and for finding a new position in this situation, which is difficult and stirs high emotions”. This is not the first time Polish activists have had to defend Poland’s limited abortion rights. In 2016, when the government attempted to push similar...

Thousands of people have marched in cities across Poland in protests against a near-total ban on abortion. Poland already has some of the strictest abortion laws in the world. There are fewer than 2,000 legal abortions a year in Poland, and the vast majority take place because of malformed foetuses, which would be illegal following the court ruling such abortions were unconstitutional. The new ruling restricts abortions to circumstances of rape, incest, or if there is a threat to the woman’s life. Women’s groups estimate that as many as 200,000 procedures are performed illegally or abroad each...