Poland's government proposes anti-gay laws which breach European & Human rights

by iosaf .:. ipsiphi Wed Mar 21, 2007 14:44 barcelona - catalunya 00 34 636 105 231

Amnesty International are for the most part ignored by governments throughout the EU - otherwise we would have decent prisons, no torture & mental health care in Ireland. But it is de rigour to cite them when rights issues are discussed. Here is their 2006 report on gender & sexuality rights issues in Poland & Latvia : http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGEUR010192006?op...G-POL
If you don't have either the time or inclination to go through that - here's something which was prompted with Polish society specifically in mind : "European Parliament, Resolution on Homophobia in Europe, P6_TA(2006)0018, 18 January 2006, paragraph the 2nd".
In fact I suggest people go through that page - it makes very disturbing reading. I am very worried that so many years after Bertie's "EU of 25" which I insisted at the time had been poorly sociologically prepared. My worries at that time have grown since - that societies forged under the experience of totalitarianism be it Nazi or Soviet had not had enough time to develop democratic values. Furthermore that societies which upon accession to the EU saw such huge numbers of their citizens (especially young, educated or skilled) migrate westwards left ever increasingly rightwing and authoritarian sections in command at home.

Check out these quotes by individuals who are either still in government or now form the opposition all of which I source to the amnesty link above :-

"If a person tries to infect others with their homosexuality, then the state must intervene in this violation of freedom." Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, then Prime Minister, 3 October 2005

"If deviants begin to demonstrate, they should be hit with batons." Wojciech Wierzejski, Deputy of the Sejm (Polish National Assembly), 11 May 2006.

"Homosexual practices lead to drama, emptiness and degeneracy." Teresa Łecka, new director of the National In-Service Teacher Training Centre, 9 October 2006.

June 2005, Wojciech Wierzejski, who was then a Member of the European Parliament and of the LPR, called for "no tolerance for homosexuals and deviants"

October 2005, the then Prime Minister, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz was reported as saying that homosexuality was "unnatural" and that if a person "tries to infect others with their homosexuality, then the state must intervene in this violation of freedom".

October 2005 Lech Kaczyński, who is now President of the Republic of Poland whilst his win brother is prime minister , said that he would continue to ban LGBT demonstrations, as "public promotion of homosexuality will not be allowed"

Poland might have seemed to both Aznar & Ahern as "the most developed for capitalism" large population state of the former Warsaw Pact. They both played up to its peculiar demands for exceptional status - Aznar attempting to reweight voting rights which would have seen Spain & Poland as "middle powers" (this failed). Amongst the features of its capitalist development - one calls for attention - that of the link between politics and private media. As in Italy before & Berlusconi's fininvest empire - in Poland there is a questionable collusion between what I term "estates".

21 May 2006, Roman Giertych, then Deputy Prime Minister, & then Minister of Education and also leader of the LPR said on TVN (a Polish private TV channel) that "LGBT organizations are sending transsexuals to kindergartens and asking children to change their sex." The owners of TVN are of course in government now & use this channel pretty much as Berlusconi used his.***

7 August 2006 Paweł Zyzak, editor in chief of a PiS magazine, Right Turn!, wrote that gays are "animals" and were "the emissaries of Satan sent to destroy the Catholic Church."(30) Around the same time, in the city of Koscierzyna, a leading PiS member of parliament who is also a member of the party’s governing council, Waldemar Bonkowski, placed a large banner on the wall of the local party headquarters. "Today it’s gays and lesbians -- what’s next, zoophilia? Is that liberty and democracy? No, that’s syphilisation! is looking down from the sky and asking, Whither goest thou, Poland?" the banner read.

= I'd suggest Poland goes out of the EU.
___________________________________________________________________________

* I always write BGLT by the way - not LGBT. I do this - because (1) I'm awkward (2) it's both alphabetically and demographically correct. I only very rarely attempt to "concentrate or distill" my thoughts on gender politics into the form which we know is the most effective of the 21st century - "pithy internet based - social movement linked - colloquially pitched : the medium is the message".
I don't do this rarely - because it is more difficult subject matter than the others, but probably because I'm straight and still find resistance to one of my starting premises - the historical relagation of bisexuality in western culture. The roots of gay rights in the context of western human rights which are sourced as by now you know - the french revolution and masonic traditions rather than "granted by God" have come from reactions to criminalisation & prejudice. My last attempt to treat on this problem was going to be "the Sunday Papers wiliam wilde edition" - but I got sidetracked into considering the role of the hermetic order of the Golden Dawn........pity. But 1895 was as I wrote then "the year of the closet", a benchmark which has since seen bisexuality downplayed for the furtherance of gay or lesbian agenda. I understand the politics - but question the longterm wisdom.

** In addition to Sexuality issues - Poland is obviously out on the fascistic fringes when it comes to Gender politics. This has nothing to do with Catholicism. the Roman religion is all too often an excuse by perpetrator & victim alike for authoritarianism & fascism. c/f http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6470403.stm http://indymedia.ie/article/81591
***Oh yep! Can I remind ye all of the Belarus crises & the role played by Poland's "capitalist politicians so beloved of Ahern & Aznar" ? Not the elections which saw us all square up with the CIA and Russia FIS against the Minsk government - but the roots of the crises? Just in case you forgot - the Polish right wing broadcast 24/7 into Belarus using technology which is the latest generation of "radio liberty". I had at the time linked this outragous inteference in a neighbouring state with the presence (unproven) of a CIA black prison site on the Polish/Belarus frontier. By the time we knew about those prisons the spooks had cleaned up & gone. (c/f our belarus archive election - http://indymedia.ie/article/75075 http://indymedia.ie/article/75079 radio black propaganda http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/23/news/radio.php http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/01/ef4a8d4e-9....html
background on Refrl (the radio crew & tactics : http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/03/336584.html )



Let me remind you all yet again - Poland is the sick state of Europe. The greatest threats to our liberties now come from the Polish people - not those who moved to Ireland - those who stayed.
If Gender & Sexuality issues are the one to bring your attention to this problem - so be it. & one of the main people to blame is in fact Bertie Ahern.

last link to today's Pink News

The twins - president & premier of Poland. Tell your MEP to expel them from the EU

by C Murray Thu Mar 22, 2007 09:45

I am aware that there is Irish Coverage of the Polish Prime Minister's visit
and it was made very clear to him that homophobia is unacceptable,
but I decided to add this link, anyway:-

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-3768.html

It coincided with the refusal of Michael Mc Dowell to countenance the Labour Party
private members bill on rights for gay couples which was covered on indymedia.ie
and can be found in the search engine.

The homophobic outbursts, were all over the weekend media and in the discussion
shows, but since then the issue of co-habitation, same sex unions and gay adoption
rights have been shelved by our right-wing party the PD's.

This is probably to investigate whether there is a vote or liberalisation of the
market available within the issue of human rights, rather than any real concern
for the human rights of the gay community.

by images - Fight Hate Violence Thu Mar 22, 2007 10:01

On the eve of Elton John's Birthday he has asked that people stand up against
hate violence, and be careful of the language we use to describe something
which is outside of our experience.

This was in the Dublin free papers, this morning.

by iosaf Sat Mar 24, 2007 15:17

As of 23/3 (yesterday) Poland's far right & neo- Nazi groupings as much as the fascistic leanings of its curret government and opposition are in the spotlight.

From indymedia global's feature page :-

"On Wednesday 21 March 2007, in the country in which most of the Holocaust took place, about 100 neonazis from Narodowego Odrodzenia Polski (NOP) organised a demonstration in Wroclaw. They yelled out slogans including "White power", "All Poland, only white", "Free Poland without n...ers", "In our country there's a place for black - but only if we're talking about black shirts". About 300 antifascists organised a counterdemonstration. No fights occurred between the two groups: the main conflict was verbal, with shouts of "Antifa" from one side and "White power" from the other. Police made a tight cordon separating the two groups.

Despite the fact that NOP is a prohibited organisation according to Article 13 of the Polish Constitution, police did not detain any neonazis. Instead, they detained two human rights activists, one from Torun and one from Warsaw, who were participating in the antifascist counterdemonstration. The two activists have now been detained for over 24 hours. An "instant justice" McDonalds type court is expected to judge both antiracist activists today Friday 23 March 2007 at around 11:00 local time (10:00 UTC)."

c/f http://www.indymedia.org
http://www.indymedia.pl

by . Sat Mar 24, 2007 19:18

The last published image of the Nazi salute on this newswire was at the General Pinochet
Funeral ;- The photo above came with a question.

The polarisation of political viewpoints in the EU has led us to a pass, wherein
a murderous regime is venerated for genocide in a public place by kids. That
comprises and obscenity which begs the question who educates their children that
Nationalism can be expressed in a parade of Hatred and division?

And who benefits from young men who choose to express themselves
with that salute?

The salute is historically acknowledged as the trajectory of an erection- thats
from a new book about Hitler's education- that says a lot that they are doing it in
the street. There is no point in pretending that this is not happening, abuse and killing
of protestors has occured in the Calderon/Ruis regimes, the Mugabe, the Arroyo
regimes and all of them are aspiring to benefit from Western Econmic methodologies
by killing the traditional , the spirited and the indigenous communities.

Cultural debasement is happening in Ireland too- the reaction is milder, there is a
polarisation between the left and right about embracing old Nationalistic ideals
versus perceived intrusive modern liberal ideologies. The problem here is that
the ideologies so desperately clung to are falsified images of 1916 that have
been fethished by a government that has not even begun to understand the
reality of 1916 which was to create an egalitarian society of women and men, with
a duty of care to citizens and not a corporate sell out on heritage, nursing homes
and environmental abuse.

The kids in the photo are primed for hatred because they have been lied
to by the governement and twisted out of their humanity by a veneration of
a sloppy interpretation of masculinist politics. it is truly sickening to behold.

Is this all there is left for young people to express determination with?

by iosaf Sun Mar 25, 2007 17:31

there are 2 basic directions for all people to lean when their social or other problems are not addressed in a proper political way. The better one - by far the best - is that they be sent "to us". Rather than give a 17 year old the vote - encourage him or her to take on the hood of anti-system anger, the spray can of the anarchist, the burden of the social movement. The worst - but by far the more usual in the continental EU of many tiers of citizenship - is to goto the sentimentalist & hatred based far right.
Thus I understand perfectly that volunteer firemen in a sleepy hamlet of Pretzien near Berlin burn Anne Frank's diary at a mid-summer's party, http://indymedia.ie/article/81226 I understand perfectly that exensively dressed students of law and medicine cut traffic in Madrid with the Franco flag in hand - I understand perfectly that boosted by large amounts of money from the Bible Belt of the USA - the KKK has sown seeds of neo-nazi hatred throughout the former Warsaw Pact. It is not unusual for me to see Utrecht in riot for a 2 weeks. It is not strange that neonazi's march in Budapest. It is not in the bit unusual that some Rumanian MEP's sit down with other "anti-europeans" to form a far right block in parliament.

You don't have to be a timelord, you don't have to be a jesuit pedagogue, you don't have to be a politically correct sophist schoolteacher, you don't have to be the master Sunday presiding over the table of world anarchistic planning of Chesterton's weak novel "the who was Thursday", (a seven man council of police spies) to know what has gone wrong...

Understanding what has been done wrong - is little use at the moment, & worse - it is irritating in the extreme considering that sufficient fore-warning was given. The rise of the far right & neo-nazism and the acceptance of Fascistic symbolism throughout the continental EU was just as the consequences of the Iraq war & Ratzinger's selection as pontiff - something I drew together a long time ago. I've written on this site at least over a dozen times that one of the primary problems with Europe, is that Europeans are in the main part "post-fascistic". Which is why I use the little illustration of the nazi and soviet flag mixed together so often.

But where do we go? For reasons of time - I can't tell ye now. Suffice to touch 3 points
(1) we do not continue with "grand coalition" such as that which rules Germany - where 2 main parties enter coalition despite both losing votes to their fringes & obviously winning votes on the basis of "not entering coalition with their main rival".
(2) We do not continue treating these problems as solely criminal in nature nor thinking of them as being as nihilist peer-response memes, such as the French teenage bus-burnings.
(3) we may not for much longer tolerate the overlap of estates in civil society which sees millionaire interests in media overtly direct political agenda & determine "public opinion".

the last of these 3 reasons - is where you dear reader & all of us cheap writers come in. It was, is and always will be the reason for indymedia.
I'll leave you with the Sunday Papers "opinion poll" edition.

Europe's mystery.

by C murray Mon Mar 26, 2007 11:02

The two anti-facist protestors have been released.

They were given a fine of40 Euros.
They were charged with violating the "police's bodily untouchability" but not in a way
that is "significantly damaging to society" .......and bound to the peace for two years.

mmmmmmmmmm:- the Police in poland have a bodily untouchability clause
and yet there are neo-nazi's on the streets making veneration to genocidal
regimes.

the update is at link:- http://www.indymedia.org/