Tag: Law and Justice

Maciej Wąsik, deputy head of the Ministry of Interior and Administration and deputy coordinator of secret services, lost the trial for violation of personal rights. He accused the Open Dialogue Foundation of connections with Russia, hybrid activities and money laundering, and accused the head of the Foundation Bartosz Kramek of calling for bloodshed.

The Deputy Minister of the Interior lost the defamation case in court. What does a hearing look like, during which a representative of the government can’t count on the judge’s favour? We play it from the minutes and recordings.

A verdict was issued on the case brought by Bartosz Kramek, Lyudmyla Kozlovska and the Open Dialogue Foundation founded by them against Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs and Administration Maciej Wąsik.

“We received nothing. Instead, a quarter of a million zlotys was given to Robert Bąkiewicz, a person of outstanding merit in helping Ukraine,” complained members of the Open Dialogue Foundation, which for years has been supporting Ukrainians and inhabitants of other countries of the former USSR. The Open Dialogue Foundation has applied to the Chancellery […]

Since the Law and Justice (PiS)-led United Right coalition took power in 2015, we have witnessed an unprecedented level of politicisation of the public prosecution service, which has been transformed into a tool serving political and personal interests of the ruling camp and its members. This resulted in a growing number of politically motivated cases of investigations carried out primarily against those regarded as opponents of the government.

The below case is an extended version of a case presented in our upcoming report entitled “Polish Public Prosecutor’s Office: Selected Cases of Malicious Prosecution and Dereliction of Duties since 2015”, published with the cooperation of the Themis Judges’ Association, the Racist and Xenophobic Behaviour Monitoring Centre (OMZRiK) and ObyPomoc – Obywatele RP. The GetBack […]

On February 1st, in the Warsaw headquarters of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODHIR), the three leaders of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s (OSCE PA) human rights committee met with Polish civil society representatives at the forefront of defending the rule of law in the country. The purpose of the meeting was […]

1. Summary The Open Dialogue Foundation (ODF), founded in 2009 in Poland, is a European NGO fighting for human rights, democracy and the rule of law in the post-Soviet area and, more recently, within the EU, focusing on stopping the rise of authoritarianism and the far-right in states like Poland and Hungary. Before 2017 the Foundation was known […]

Read at: https://balkaninsight.com/2021/12/14/taking-the-fight-against-polands-government-into-the-international-arena/

After years of mostly ineffective protests against the dismantling of the independent judiciary, human-rights standards, relationship with the EU and, finally, against the ongoing deaths of migrants at the Belarus border, you’d be excused for thinking Poles must have lost hope. Indeed, some on the pro-European side of the expert circles fear Polish democracy might […]

In the past few weeks, we have filed a cassation appeal with the Supreme Administrative Court (NSA) against the latest judgment issued by the Provincial Administrative Court (WSA) in Warsaw in July 2021 (which was served to us [two months later] in September). Contrary to three previous decisions, this “court” agreed, for the first time, […]

Since the Law and Justice (PiS)-led United Right coalition (composed of PiS and its two minor partners – Solidarna Polska and Porozumienie) took power in 2015, we have witnessed an unprecedented level of politicization of the public prosecution service that has been transformed into a tool serving political and personal interests of the ruling camp and its members. This resulted in a growing number of politically motivated cases of investigations carried out against those regarded as opponents of the government. The continuous changes to the criminal justice system (Criminal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure, Law on the Prosecutor’s Service) expand the powers of the prosecution, amplifying the so-called inequality of arms between the sides of the criminal proceedings and a general repressiveness of the system.

The fear of refugees helped the Law and Justice to win the parliamentary elections of 2015. At that time, the party used to expressly promote its anti-immigration philosophy, which was soon reflected by the growing ratio of assaults on the grounds of racism and xenophobia.

The Open Dialogue Foundation (ODF) is a human rights NGO established in 2009 in Poland, with its headquarters in Brussels since 2018. Before 2017 the Foundation was known in Poland for its support delivered to Ukraine during the Euromaidan revolution and in response to Russian aggression. In 2017 the NGO took a stance in defence […]

The Head of the Open Dialogue Foundation Board has been hunted by Poland’s secret services ever since he posted an online manifesto calling for a peaceful overthrow of the authoritarian rule of the PiS party. The foundation, which has gained recognition for its fight for human rights and democracy in post-Soviet countries, had to move […]