Less than a month after Lyudmyla Kozlovska’s expulsion by the Law and Justice government in retaliation for her husband’s (Bartosz Kramek) opposition activity, President of the Open Dialogue Foundation returned to the territory of the European Union. German parliamentarians invited her to a hearing, held in the Bundestag, entitled “Human rights in danger – dismantling the rule of law in Poland and Hungary”.
On 11 September, i.e. less than a month after the deportation as a result of entering her name into the Schengen Information System (SIS) by the Polish authorities, Lyudmyla Kozlovska landed in Berlin. The visa with annotation ‘nationale interesse’ was issued to her by the German authorities in order for her to be able to take part in a meeting devoted to the issue of violating the rule of law in Hungary and Poland, held today, and speak about the attack on NGOs on the part of the Polish governing party.
“Until 2017, we had never commented on Poland’s internal situation. This country has always been a model for its eastern neighbours and post-Soviet countries which wish to carry out democratic transformation (…). Unfortunately, this is a thing of the past,” Kozlovska stated at the hearing. Also, she added that following her husband’s engagement in the opposition activities, the Polish government began to persecute her family and the Open Dialogue Foundation. “The key Polish ministers publicly discussed the measures that should be taken against us and other civil society organisations. We were accused of wanting to provoke a bloody revolution of the so-called Maidan and overthrow the government, of acting in the interests of Russia, George Soros, Germany, Brussels elites or Ukrainian nationalists”.
In addition to Lyudmyla Kozlovska, the subject of the situation in Poland was discussed by representatives of the Human Rights Watch and the Helsinki Human Rights Foundation. In the next days, the president of the ODF will have meetings with MPs of different factions, representatives of the civil society, and journalists from Polish and foreign mass media.
Read also:
- “The populist path towards authoritarianism must be stopped”. Lyudmyla Kozlovska’s speech at the Bundestag
- Poland uses SIS to prevent President of the Open Dialog Foundation from entering the Schengen area
- Information on the inclusion of Lyudmyla Kozlovska in the SIS database by Poland
- Unprecedented attacks on the Open Dialog Foundation in Poland
- Information on unprecedented attacks on civil society organisations in Poland