Last year, on 13 December, the Voivodeship Administrative Court (WSA) in Warsaw ordered the Office for Foreigners to remove Lyudmyla Kozlovska from the list of undesirable people in Poland. “In 2018, after many years of residency, I was banned from entering Poland upon a private request of Mariusz Kamiński and Maciej Wąsik who controlled the Polish special services. I do hope that in the new political environment, administrative bodies will respect the judgment of the court and that malicious, politically motivated persecution of activists will be discontinued,” Kozlovska said.
On 13 December last year, the Voivodeship Administrative Court in Warsaw issued a decision ordering the head of the Office for Foreigners to immediately remove Lyudmyla Kozlovska from the list of undesirable persons on the territory of both Poland and other Schengen countries. The judgment is not final.
The decision to make Kozlovska, President of the Open Dialogue Foundation, persona non grata in Poland was adopted by the Interior Ministry, governed by the Law and Justice (PiS), in 2018. This happened after her husband, activist Bartosz Kramek, published an appeal on social media a year earlier entitled: “Let the State Come to a Stop: Let’s Shut Down the Government!”. It referred to the protests surrounding the PiS government’s implementation of so-called judicial reform.
The court orders Kozlovska to be recognised as welcome in Poland. “Rehabilitation needed”.
“In 2018, after many years of residency, I was banned from entering Poland upon a private request of Mariusz Kamiński and Maciej Wąsik who controlled the Polish secret services,” says Kozlovska. “I do hope that in the new political environment, administrative bodies will respect the judgment of the court and that malicious, politically motivated persecution of activists will be discontinued,” she stresses.
“The new government and the parliament should take up the task of rehabilitating the people persecuted and harassed by the former authorities, who continue to face criminal charges instigated by the most subservient and discredited prosecutors, such as Jerzy Ziarkiewicz,” says Kozlovska.
“From our perspective, this judgment sets a precedent. For the first time ever, the court has not only overturned the decisions of the Voivode of the Mazowieckie province and the Head of the Office for Foreigners, but actually ruled that the ban on my wife’s entry into Poland is to be cancelled. This is a bittersweet victory, as justice was served after 6 years of struggle,” says Kozlovska’s husband, Bartosz Kramek.
The hunt for spouses Kozlovska and Kramek: it’s time to start
The hunt of the Polish authorities against the Open Dialogue Foundation has been going on since July 2017. At that time, the husband of the President of the Open Dialogue Foundation (ODF) Lyudmyla Kozlovska and civil activist Bartosz Kramek published on Facebook the text “Let the State Come to a Stop: Let’s Shut Down the Government!”, in which, using the experience of the Ukrainian Maidan as an example, he proposed “how to stop the Law and Justice party’s attack on the rule of law in Poland”.
This post infuriated the Polish government. Its representatives accused ODF of involvement in Russian hybrid warfare and spoke, among other things, of incitement to bloodshed, although there was not a word about this in the text. The then Minister of Foreign Affairs Witold Waszczykowski then sent a request to the Tax Authority in Warsaw to initiate an audit of the Open Dialogue Foundation.
The Tax Authority in Warsaw redirected the request to the Customs and Tax Office in Łódź, where Witold Waszczykowski’s brother Tomasz Waszczykowski was the Head of the 1st Customs and Tax Control Department. The Customs and Tax Office in Łódź initiated several tax audits in ODF and Bartosz Kramek’s company Silk Road.
Referring to the fact that the Waszczykowski brothers were directly related, the Foundation filed a motion to exclude the head of the Customs and Tax Office in Łódź from the case. The motion was rejected. Despite repeated extensions of the audits, the inspectors have so far not found any evidence of abuse by ODF and Silk Road.
Officials explicitly admit that the ODF’s funding was fully in pursuit of its statutory human rights objectives. Instead, one of the main allegations is the failure to pay allegedly due tax on humanitarian aid (including helmets and bulletproof vests) that ODF provided to Ukrainians fighting Russia in the Donbas. This information is contained in the preliminary result of the ODF’s 2014-15 tax audit, which Onet has.
Witold Waszczykowski and then his successor as head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jacek Czaputowicz, also tried to suspend ODF’s Management Board and introduce an external receiver to the Foundation. They were unsuccessful there too, with the court rejecting a request to establish a receivership at ODF.
Subsequently, requests by Law and Justice MEPs Ryszard Czarnecki, Ryszard Legutko and Kosma Złotowski to withdraw the ODF’s accreditation with the EU institutions in Brussels, which were addressed to the European Commission, were also rejected.
Europe ignores Polish entry ban
The Polish state achieved its first success against the dozen-strong Foundation in August 2018. Landing at Brussels airport, the Ukrainian President of ODF, Lyudmyla Kozlovska, found out then that, based on a negative opinion from the Internal Security Agency (ABW), Poland had entered her data in the Schengen Information System (SIS), which allows the checking of people crossing the Schengen zone border. Onet was the first to report on the case.
Kozlovska, as a “threat to national security”, was marked with the highest alert resulting in her immediate deportation. The following day she was – following police procedures – sent back to Kyiv by the Belgians on the first plane.
However, in the following months, more European countries started to extend her invitations to give lectures and hold debates on the rule of law in Poland:
- in September, she spoke at the Bundestag in Berlin (Germany)
- also in September, she spoke at the European Parliament in Brussels (Belgium)
- in October, she spoke at the House of Commons in London (United Kingdom)
- also in October, she addressed the Council of Europe in Strasbourg (France)
- in November, she addressed the UN in Geneva (Switzerland).
The Polish authorities protested, but were ignored by their European counterparts on this issue, as they were unable to provide them with any evidence that Kozlovska was breaking the law. Deputy Foreign Minister Bartosz Cichocki, outraged by Kozlovska and Kramek’s arrival in London, alleged on Twitter that British Ambassador Jonathan Knott lacked confidence in Polish counter-intelligence. The British diplomatically did not respond.
Source: onet.pl
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In other media:
- Notes From Poland: Court overturns Ukrainian NGO head’s Poland entry ban introduced by former government (January 5, 2024)
- Wprost: Court handed down a judgement in Lyudmyla Kozlovska’s case (January 5, 2024)
- Gazeta Wyborcza: Lyudmyla Kozlovska regains right to stay in Poland after six years (January 5, 2024)
- OKO.press: VAC: Lyudmyla Kozlovska no longer an undesirable (January 4, 2024)
