In March 2021, Joanna Lichocka filed a bill of indictment against Marcin Mycielski and Bartosz Kramek (Spontaniczny Sztab Obywatelski), who organised an online campaign to raise funds for the publication of billboards posters. An image of the MP appeared on them, together with a description suggesting that her gesture was aimed at cancer sufferers. According to the MP, Marcin Mycielski and Bartosz Kramek had slandered her “for conduct that humiliated her in the public eye and put her at risk of losing the confidence needed to exercise her mandate”.
As Marcin Mycielski told us, more than two years after Lichocka’s indictment, the Warszawa-Śródmieście District Court “did not find statements from which to draw such far-reaching conclusions ”.
In its written justification, the court stated that the billboards were “an assessment of the activities, performed in the public sphere, of the defendant and the political party of which Ms Lichocka is an MP. […] The function of a Member of Parliament is of a public nature and is subject to numerous assessments and criticism by individual citizens or social groups.
[…] The actions of the defendants did not refer exclusively to the actions of Joanna Lichocka but were part of a broader social campaign aimed at criticising the way in which the Law and Justice party politicians exercise their legislative authority. The image of the wronged party was posted as a result of her behaviour during a sitting of the Sejm and had previously been disseminated by numerous nationwide media. The objective criteria for assessing the defendants’ actions do not allow the assumption to be made that their actions were defamatory. They constituted acceptable criticism in a democratic state of the actions taken by a political party and its individual MPs,” the court stated in its written reasoning.
Lichocka’s indictment against Mycielski and Kramek was filed in court on 12 February 2021. Previously, the activists were summoned to remove the fundraiser from their websites, publish an apology and pay a sum to the Rak’n’Roll – Win Life Foundation.
Source: press.pl
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