“For eight years PiS has been ruining the lives of people defending the rule of law in Poland. If we want to talk about democratic change, there must be accountability,” say Lyudmyla Kozlovska and Bartosz Kramek from the Open Dialogue Foundation (ODF). They are calling for a commission of inquiry into the matter.
The Open Dialogue Foundation is engaged in the defence of human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Poland and Eastern European countries. It has also been arranging aid to civilians and military personnel since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. During the rule of the Law and Justice (PiS) party, activists inconvenient to the authorities found themselves targeted by the services, PiS politicians and the media supporting them. A report drafted in the Moldovan parliament accusing the Foundation of acting on behalf of Russia was used to attack them. At the beginning of 2023, the report was annulled by the Moldovan parliament and called by politicians “a stain on the conscience not only of the previous government, but also of Moldovan parliamentarism”. Although the Law and Justice party has not backed down from its accusations, the Foundation has brought a number of lawsuits against politicians and the pro-ruling media on this issue. ODF is winning them one by one.
Interview with Lyudmyla Kozlovska and Bartosz Kramek, who run the Open Dialogue Foundation
Anita Karwowska: The price you paid for defending the rule of law under the ruling of the Law and Justice is huge. Attempts were made to paint you as “Russian agents”. Lyudmyla is still banned from Poland, lawsuits for violation of your personal rights by PiS politicians and subservient media are pending in the courts. What do you intend to do about it in the new political climate?
Lyudmyla Kozlovska: Never let it be forgotten. No one, not the public, nor the politicians, nor the justice system should forget about that. We are one of the many who were politically persecuted under the PiS government and we are speaking up for everyone. The ruling party has been ruining the lives of activists, journalists, non-compliant prosecutors and judges, and entrepreneurs and their families for eight years for the fact that they were participating in the defence of the rule of law in Poland. No life broken can be forgotten.
If we want to talk about any real democratic change in Poland, there must also be accountability for those who took part in political persecution. And this will not be an act of revenge, but simple justice and a memento for the future. Impunity emboldens the perpetrators and demoralises society.
What is your personal situation today? In 2018, you were entered into the Schengen Information System by the head of the Internal Security Agency, and as a result you were banned from entering most European Union countries, including Poland. The courts have repeatedly ruled that this decision was unjustified.
L.K.: I was expelled from Poland at the personal request of Mariusz Kaminski and Maciej Wąsik, who controlled the Polish services. So far, the administrative courts have already ruled five times that the evidence collected and classified by the Internal Security Agency is of little value. In December, the Provincial Administrative Court in Warsaw ordered the Head of the Office for Foreigners to remove me from the list of undesirable foreigners in Poland. Yet my data is still on that list. So my situation is in practice the same as it was before the elections.
Why have you not yet regained your right to stay in Poland?
L.K.: Ultimately, it is up to the Head of the Office for Foreigners to dot the i’s and cross the t’s in this case — to issue a document confirming the cancellation of the entry ban, which will allow me to obtain long-term resident status and return to Poland. However, this post is still held by the nominee of the Law and Justice party Jarosław Szajner.
You used the term “a ruined life”. Is yours like that?
L.K.: In a way, yes. Seven years ago a massive smear campaign was launched to destroy the reputation of the Open Dialogue Foundation and our personal reputations. Since then, we have been fighting for our good name, but it is extremely difficult since the scale of this attack was enormous. Many people and institutions ended their cooperation with us, donors withdrew. It is difficult and time-consuming to rebuild what we had.
The authorities used the entire state system against us, and this translated into many aspects of our lives. I can’t stay in Poland, we were deprived of our bank accounts for some time, Bartosz couldn’t enter Canada and the USA because Ziobro’s Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation against him that was also politically motivated.
Bartosz Kramek: Just type my name into Google and the term “Russian agent” quickly comes up. There were few boundaries in our case that were not crossed by the previous government and the bodies subordinate to it. Nevertheless, we did not give in to all this pressure and continued to do our job. We won further proceedings in Poland — including in defence of our personal rights. The question is what to do next, because many key positions still have officials loyal to the previous government, and there are still many repressive proceedings going on, including the ones against me.
What proceedings exactly?
B.K.: Since 2018, an investigation has been conducted against me by the Regional Prosecutor’s Office in Lublin and the Internal Security Agency [the case concerns invoices issued by Bartosz Kramek’s company, which, according to the Prosecutor’s office, were fictitious]. Until Monday 29 January a trusted man of Zbigniew Ziobro, Jerzy Ziarkiewicz, was in charge. I was detained in 2021, but it was the ban on leaving the country for almost six months — in a situation where Lyudmyla was banned from entry — that was particularly severe. Although the court overturned the preventive measures imposed by the prosecutor, this case is still pending, making me formally still a suspect.
Adam Bodnar has started to change the justice system, how is he doing?
B.K.: Adam Bodnar is an icon of the fight for the rule of law in Poland, so the expectations on him are exceptionally high, and the Law and Justice party has done its best not to make his job any easier. Nevertheless, I sometimes get the impression that those currently in power were not fully prepared to take over and restore the rule of law. It is as if a previously adopted plan was not followed, but instead a series of variously chaotic measures were taken.
They are generally heading in the right direction, but the transformation should be systemic, not punctuated — both in terms of institutional and personnel issues. The failure to reshuffle the Przylebska Court, the new NCJ and the failure to remove neo-judges is deepening the legal system’s collapse with each passing day and creating further political landmines as well.
We have witnessed this, for example, in the execution of the court’s verdict on Kaminski and Wąsik. And the trust and patience of the constitutionally faithful judges and ordinary citizens — who fought for the rule of law and were harassed for years because of it — has been severely put to test. The system needs a profound purging and reboot. Much depends on the excellent, distinguished judge and now deputy minister in charge of the judiciary, Dariusz Mazur. The president’s obstructionism is obvious, but many changes can be carried out on the basis of the Sejm’s resolutions, using the proposals of the Iustitia Association, as well as the ideas of Professors Wojciech Sadurski and Michał Romanowski.
Political investigations continue. We are concerned whether the new authorities are aware of the need to take a systemic approach to the subject: to draw up a list of politically motivated investigations conducted with malicious intent and to carry out a kind of audit taking into account their genesis and the numerous violations accompanying them.
If it turns out that there were no grounds for the prosecution, it should be discontinued, which in effect should serve to rehabilitate many of the victims and sufferers — morally, health-wise, property-wise.
Then there should be consequences for the perpetrators of persecution — from political paymasters to compliant prosecutors to service officers who were “just following orders”.
L.K.: I would also stress the issue of abuse on the part of the Internal Security Agency and Central Anticorruption Bureau. Under the rule of Law and Justice, they were repeatedly used for matters that should not interest them at all, because it was purely about private individuals and entities, not the state treasury, corruption of officials or national security.
Can all this you are talking about also serve as material for a parliamentary commission of inquiry?
LK: That is our demand. To form a commission of inquiry into cases of political persecution. Collecting materials wouldn’t pose a problem — the actions of the PIS government against citizens have been systematically documented, including in reports by legal communities, the Ombudsman and NGOs, including those defending human rights, such as the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, Citizens of Poland or the Szpila Collective. We have published a special report on the prosecutor’s office. It includes and classifies various cases of prosecutions against activists and other persecuted persons. The prosecution, but also the commission of inquiry we have just called for, can build on all this. It is possible to select the most drastic cases for its purposes.
It is important that all of this took place precisely in the Sejm, because the destruction of the rule of law and the ruining of the lives of opponents and critics of the Law and Justice party was carried out using all instruments of power, including the parliament.
The MPs of the previous ruling party participated in public persecution, and they passed laws extending the powers of the prosecution and law enforcement agencies. This needs to be shown to the public and MPs should also consider safeguards for the future. Legislation needs to be examined and changes have to be made to ensure that no more authorities repeat what has happened over these eight years.
What do you expect from a law-abiding democratic state?
L.K.: The closure of all politically motivated criminal cases, but also administrative cases that are now pending. I need to regain my right to stay in Poland. Every persecuted person also deserves an apology.
Apology from whom?
L.K.: From the Sejm, because the parliament must be a place that unites society.
We and our Foundation also expect apologies resulting from the lawsuits we have won for the infringement of our personal rights and the payment of damages, at least to cover the costs of removing slanderous articles from the Internet. Many texts about us on TVP Info or Polskie Radio have been published in other languages, the removal of them from Google is an expensive and complicated matter. This content is indexed and used against us abroad all the time.
B.K.: Many who have been wronged by the PiS state are waiting for justice — such as former deputy head of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority Wojciech Kwaśniak, former head of the Central Anticorruption Bureau Paweł Wojtunik, former head of the Polish Railways PKP Jakub Karnowski, Babcia Kasia harassed by the police and nationalists, Women’s Strike activists or judge Waldemar Żurek. In a similar situation, beset by disciplinary complaints and motions to strip her of immunity, stands the independent prosecutor Ewa Wrzosek. Persecution by the disciplinary ombudsmen and court presidents appointed by Ziobro continues. Previously suspended Krakow judge Maciej Ferek is forced to work in a division of the court figuratively referred to as a “criminal colony”, struggling with an impossible number of cases. This is where — after a malicious and illegal transfer — Judge Żurek also ended up.
Some activists still spend many days in court responding to police motions for punishment or penalty orders. A separate issue is the migrants at the border who are subjected to illegal, violent pushback in Podlasie as well as aggression and criminal cases against activists who try to help them. This has to stop.
Many people have been victims of police brutality, not only in Warsaw. They never made it to the posters, and they deserve some kind of at least moral reparation. How many police officers — commanders and the rank-and-file — have been punished for this? How many disciplinary proceedings have been initiated? This should be openly communicated to the public by the new police chiefs and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
What responsibility should the initiators and perpetrators of this persecution bear?
L.K.: I believe that, at the very least, there should be financial consequences (liability for damages) and loss of the right to hold public office and decide the fate of others. The question of lustration procedures related to abuses of power and violations of oaths of allegiance to the law and the constitution remains open. In fact, Ukrainian judges, officials and functionaries were subjected to lustration and personnel verification after the Maidan revolution.
B.K.: It is necessary to initiate criminal proceedings for exceeding powers and failing to fulfil duties, as well as “crimes against the administration of justice”. In practice, we are talking, among other things, about the brutal crackdown on protests in defence of the rule of law, women’s and LGBT+ rights, detentions without legal or factual basis, arbitrary charges, fabrication of evidence, illegal surveillance, violation of the secrecy of investigations, intimidation and detentions prolonged to exert pressure on the detainee. And in the cases of inconvenient entrepreneurs such as Leszek Czarnecki, Przemysław Krych and Piotr Osiecki – even extortion and attempts to take over companies for nothing, as in Russia. I suspect, by the way, that we only know the tip of the iceberg here, because not everyone has had the courage to come forward so far.
The catalogue of criminal acts that could have been committed seems, unfortunately, very wide. Kaminski, Wąsik, Ziobro, the long-standing national prosecutor Bogdan Święczkowski, their deputy prosecutors such as Jerzy Ziarkiewicz or Artur Maludy, and PiS service chiefs, including Grzegorz Ocieczek [the former head of the CBA, who wrote the motion for the surveillance of Krzysztof Brejza using Pegasus], should make themselves comfortable on the defendant’s bench. There can be no sacred cows here.
Source: wyborcza.pl
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