Tag: persecution of lawyers

On 4 March 2021 we organised an online hearing for Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), European Parliament advisors and selected journalists under the title “Law and Justice’s Crackdown on Independent Prosecutors in Poland Intensifies”, featuring persecuted Polish independent prosecutors from the Lex Super Omnia association – Katarzyna Kwiatkowska, Jacek Bilewicz and Ewa Wrzosek – […]

On 28 January 2021, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a resolution on judges in Poland and the Republic of Moldova. The resolution, resulting from ODF’s advocacy efforts back in 2018, urges the countries’ authorities to uphold the rule of law and ensure judicial independence. Prior to passing the resolution the Assembly voted on a series of amendments. Three out of five of the amendments that ODF’s team has helped to draw up and advocated for, further detailing the Polish government’s rule of law breaches, were accepted by an overwhelming majority.

In the latest instance of the Polish authorities’ open disregard for the rule of law, 14 Cracow judges have been exposed to politicised prosecution and investigations. Their alleged crime? Handing down judgments which were inconvenient for the authorities and failing to persecute Prosecutor Krasoń – a staunch defender of the independence of the judiciary.  This […]

The tumultuous year 2020 is coming to an end. It is time to sum up what we have managed to do in the fight for the rule of law in Poland. The pandemic was not an easy time – forced austerity and accelerated adaptation to new conditions. We closed our offices and moved our democracy […]

On October 8, 2020 we had the pleasure of organising an online hearing for Members of the European Parliament under the title “How should the EU support the Polish judiciary?”, featuring persecuted Polish judges Beata Morawiec and Dariusz Mazur, with additional expertise provided by Prof. Laurent Pech. The event was co-hosted by MEPs Róza Thun […]

The Open Dialogue Foundation provided inputs to the first annual Rule of Law Report, the European Commission’s latest oversight mechanism and a part of its wider rule of law toolbox. Together with experts and practitioners from Poland – judges Dariusz Mazur and Agnieszka Niklas-Bibik, as well as former public media employee, Piotr Owczarski – we submitted our feedback on the worrisome developments in the Polish justice system and media sector in 2019 and the first half of 2020. The European Commission’s initiative will result in the “Rule of Law Report”, expected to be published in September 2020.

On the 20th February 2020, on the occasion of the 19th Winter Meeting of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, together with the members of the Dutch Delegation, Farah Karimi and Boris Dittrich, we had the pleasure of hosting the side-event “New and Old Ways of Suppressing Dissent in the OSCE Area: Protecting Political Refugees from Legal and Technological Abuse”.

As is by now tradition for us, we were proud to be present during the 2020 Winter Session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, held on 27-31 January 2020 in Strasbourg, France. Our delegation consisted of ODF President Lyudmyla Kozlovska, Kazakhstani activist from the ‘Qaharman’ human rights movement Dana Zhanay and Polish persecuted judge Dominik Czeszkiewicz from the Suwałki District Court.

On December 18-19, 2019, the Open Dialogue Foundation’s team, together with human rights defenders from Moldova, conducted very constructive meetings in the European Parliament in plenary session in Strasbourg. The delegation consisted of Ana Ursachi, attorney prosecuted for political reasons, Stefan Gligor, co-founder and Justice and Advocacy Program Director at the Center for Policies and Reforms, Stella Juntuan, activist and former member of the Moldovan parliament, Grigore Petrenco, political refugee in Germany and leader of the Red Bloc opposition party, and was led by our colleague Martin Mycielski, Public Affairs Director at ODF.

In light of the ongoing assault on the independence of the judiciary in Poland by the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party – and especially the recently-exposed hate campaign against judges and prosecutors, orchestrated by the justice ministry itself – the Renew Europe group and the Open Dialogue Foundation have organised on December 12th, 2019, a European Parliament lunch debate with prosecutors and judges persecuted in Poland.

ODF is proud to have organised a high-level mission to Brussels of the most famous “disobedient” Polish judges & prosecutors – the leading victims of the systemic persecution & defamation of the independent judiciary in the country: judges Waldemar Żurek & Dariusz Mazur and prosecutors Krzysztof Parchimowicz & Ewa Wrzosek.

On Thursday, 12 December 2019, the European Parliament held a conference entitled „The Law and Justice Campaign against the Polish Judiciary”, organised by the Renew Europe group and the Open Dialogue Foundation. The event found reverberation in the Polish media, both pro-government and independent.

With the utmost concern we learned about the decision of the President of the Kraków District Court, Dagmara Pawełczyk-Woicka, dated 14 November 2019, who refused Judge Dariusz Mazur to conduct training for attorneys and undertake any additional activities until the end of 2019.

On 6 November 2019, Members of the Federal Parliament of Belgium’s asked questions to the Minister of Justice Koen Geens, during a Justice Committee hearing. Five parliamentarians asked questions regarding the controversial judicial cooperation between Belgium and Kazakhstan.

During the last PACE Autumn session (30-4 October), together with the Center for Civil Liberties (CCL) and the Italian Federation for Human Rights (FIDU) we had the pleasure to host: Oleg Sentsov, Ukrainian filmmaker recently released from Russian custody; Kazakhstani human rights defenders Bota Jar