“It is a stain on the conscience not only of the previous government, but also of Moldovan parliamentarism,” said PAS MP Mihai Popsoi. The report that slandered the Open Dialogue Foundation was used by PiS politicians and publicists associated with them to attack the Foundation.
The Open Dialogue Foundation is engaged in the defence of human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Poland and Eastern European countries. Since the Russian aggression against Ukraine on 24 February 2022, it has also been organising aid for civilians and soldiers.
Kozlovska prosecuted
For several years, the Open Dialogue Foundation has been targeted by special services, PiS politicians and the media that support the ruling party. In August 2018, Lyudmyla Kozlovska, the president of the Foundation, was entered by the Head of the Internal Security Agency into the Schengen Information System and marked with the highest alert. This meant that the activist who had a Ukrainian passport was banned from entering most EU countries, including Poland.
Since then, Kozlovska has been fighting in court to have her right of residence in Poland restored.
In December 2022, the Supreme Administrative Court stated that the material – both secret and public – collected by the Polish services does not allow to state that the president of the Open Dialogue Foundation poses a threat to the security of the state, which means that the activist can again apply for the right to stay in our country.
During the attacks on the Foundation, PiS politicians used, among others, a report prepared in 2018 by a special investigative committee appointed by the Moldovan parliament, dominated by oligarchic and corrupt groups. It was supposed to investigate the illegal financing of opposition parties in the country by the Open Dialogue Foundation.
The case is complex. Bartosz Kramek, head of the Open Dialogue Foundation board and Kozlovska’s husband, wrote about the genesis of the report in ‘Wyborcza’. We quote an excerpt:
“The Moldovan investigative committee was established in response to the conference organised by us in the European Parliament in Brussels in May 2017, the topic of which was political persecution in Moldova. The event was co-organised by several MEPs (including Anna Fotyga from PiS). The leaders of the Moldovan democratic opposition also took part in it, and we, as an inviting party, bought them air tickets. And that was the mythical ‘illegal financing of opposition parties’.
When the PiS authorities deported my wife, Lyudmyla Kozlovska, from Poland in August 2018, the ruling authorities of Moldova decided to take advantage of the political situation and attack both the domestic opposition and our Foundation, presenting the purchase of tickets for the conference guests a year earlier as illegal financing of foreign parties and interference of the Foundation in the internal affairs of their country.
According to reports from independent opposition Moldovan media, Poland was supposed to cooperate with the diplomacy and services of that country, supporting the work of the local investigative committee. Due to this fact, we requested public information from the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in response to which the Ministry distanced itself from the policy and activities conducted by the Moldovan government. The Polish embassy in Chisinau also discreetly tried to minimize the image losses in the autumn of 2018, expressing its sorrow to the leaders of the Moldovan opposition.”
The topic gained prominence due to the publication in the Sunday Times, which was later criticised by, among others, the Balkan correspondent of ‘The Economist’, Tim Judah, who commented on the case in social media and in Polish media. Judah said: “No one I know takes reports of the Moldovan parliament seriously.”
In Poland, PiS and the media that support it used the report to accuse the Foundation of acting on behalf of Russia and call for its banning.
“This report was intended to intimidate the opposition.”
A few days ago, the report was annulled by the Moldovan parliament. The pro-European Action and Solidarity Party (PAS), which has been in power since mid-2021, said the 2018 document was adopted to intimidate opposition parties (PAS was one of the parties listed in the document).
“We remember this scandal from 2018, during the period of the state takeover. It is a stain on the conscience not only of the previous government, which had no conscience at all, but also of Moldovan parliamentarism,” said PAS MP Mihai Popsoi. He stressed that the report defaming the Open Dialogue Foundation should have been annulled earlier.
Source: wyborcza.pl
