Joanna Lichocka has filed a private lawsuit against Marcin Mycielski and Bartosz Kramek (Spontaniczny Sztab Obywatelski), who organised an online campaign to raise funds for the erection of billboards.
The billboards featured an image of the MP with a description suggesting that her gesture was aimed at people suffering from cancer. The charge sheet alleges “slander against Joanna Lichocka by means of, inter alia, mass communication media”.
Mycielski and Kramek commented on the indictment against them on the Twitter account of the Spontaniczny Sztab Obywatelski: “We appreciate the MP’s determination to have her friendly greeting perpetuated as a symbol of the excessive pride and arrogance of PiS power”. In a statement posted there, they added: “We are glad that the public will have the opportunity to remember the role Joanna Lichocka and her party played in the decision that deprived the health service of billions of zlotys. And thanks to her, we won’t forget exactly how pathological funding for ‘public’ media under PiS is.”
The charge sheet was submitted to the court on 12 February 2021. Previously, Mycielski and Kramek had received a demand to remove the fundraising campaign from their websites, publish an apology and pay a sum to the Rak’n’Roll – Win Life Foundation. However, they did not comply with these demands.
In February last year, the Sejm voted against a resolution of the Senate to reject an amendment to the Broadcasting Act and the Licence Fees Act that envisaged a PLN 1.95 billion compensation payment to TVP and Polish Radio in 2020. After this vote, a photo of Joanna Lichocka (also a member of the National Media Council) went viral on social media in which the MP can be seen holding her middle finger extended upwards. At the time, Lichocka asserted that she had not made a vulgar gesture and that the public had been misled by the use of freeze-frame shot. Following these events, billboards were erected featuring MP Lichocka making the offensive gesture.
Source: press.pl
In other media:
- OKO.press: Lichocka takes activists to court over billboards featuring her famous gesture. They face a year in prison (28.02.2021)
- Onet: Billboards with ‘Lichocka gesture’. MP wants an apology (3.09.2020)
- Gazeta Wyborcza: MP Lichocka demands apology for billboards with “Lichocka’s gesture” (02.09.2020)
- Wirtualna Polska: New billboards with Joanna Liсhoсka’s unparliamentary gesture. “The true face of PiS politicians” (3.03.2020)
