Category Archives: Poland

Former Nazi concentration camp secretary, 96, faces trial

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Irmgard Furchner faces charges of aiding and abetting the murder of thousands of prisoners at Stutthof

A 96-year-old woman who worked as a secretary for a Nazi concentration camp commandant is to face trial in northern Germany on Thursday on charges of aiding and abetting the murder of thousands of prisoners.

Irmgard Furchner, who was just 18 when she started work at Stutthof camp on the Baltic coast in Nazi-occupied Poland, is the first woman to stand trial in decades over crimes connected to the Third Reich.

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EU seeks to tighten Belarus visa rules amid growing migrant crisis

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Bloc accuses Lukashenko of incentivising migrants to cross Belarus’s border with the EU

The European Commission has said it wants to suspend easy access to visas for Belarusian officials in an attempt to deter it from pushing migrants from the Middle East and Africa across its border with the bloc.

Neighbouring Poland, Lithuania and Latvia have declared states of emergency after a sharp increase in arrivals at their borders with Belarus, accusing the country’s dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, of an act of “hybrid warfare” in seeking to orchestrate a EU migrant crisis.

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Four migrants found dead on Poland-Belarus border

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Minsk accused of abandoning migrants at frontier in attempt to put pressure on EU

Four people stranded on the border between Poland and Belarus have died in recent days, officials have said, amid continuing allegations that Minsk is abandoning migrants at its frontier in an attempt to put pressure on the EU.

Polish authorities confirmed that three people, including an Iraqi man, were found dead, of hypothermia and exhaustion, on the Polish side of the border on Saturday, while the body of a woman was seen lying on the Belarus side on Sunday.

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Poland vows to keep coalmine open despite €500,000-a-day ECJ fine

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Warsaw argues suspension of operations at Turów on Czech border would put its energy security at risk

Poland’s rightwing government has said it will continue to mine coal on its border with the Czech Republic despite being ordered to pay €500,000 for every day that it defies a European court of justice order to stop.

The fine was issued by the EU’s highest court on Monday after four months of Warsaw ignoring an earlier order to suspend extraction of lignite, a low-quality brown coal, at the Turów opencast mine in south-west Poland.

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Texas anti-abortion law shows ‘terrifying’ fragility of women’s rights, say activists

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Campaigners fear ban emboldens anti-choice governments as more aggressive opposition, better organised and funded, spreads from US

The new anti-abortion law in Texas is a “terrifying” reminder of the fragility of hard-won rights, pro-choice activists have said, as they warn of a “more aggressive, much better organised [and] better funded” global opposition movement.

Pro-choice campaigners have seen several victories in recent years, including in Ireland, Argentina and, most recently, Mexico, where the supreme court ruled last week that criminalising abortion was unconstitutional. Another is hoped for later this month when the tiny enclave of San Marino, landlocked within Italy, holds a highly charged referendum.

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The disappeared in Mexico, Afghan female footballers and a giant puppet: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms from Thailand to Texas

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Poland’s government risks fines for flouting European court order

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Ruling party failed to comply with order on judicial independence, European Commission claims

Poland’s nationalist government risks daily fines for flouting a European court order, after EU authorities in Brussels urged financial penalties over what are seen as threats to judicial independence.

The European Commission called on the European court of justice (ECJ) to hit the Polish government with daily fines “to ensure compliance”, in a move hailed as a watershed moment in the struggle over the rule of law in the central European country.

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Second Afghan evacuee boy dies in Poland after eating toxic mushrooms

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Six-year-old pronounced dead a day after his younger brother also died after eating soup made from death cap mushrooms

A second child of an Afghan family evacuated from Kabul to Poland has died after eating soup containing death cap mushrooms, which the family had unknowingly gathered in a forest outside their quarantine centre.

The six-year-old boy received an emergency liver transplant but doctors were unable to save him. His five-year-old brother died on Thursday at Poland’s main children’s hospital in Warsaw, where both were treated.

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The revolt against liberalism: what’s driving Poland and Hungary’s nativist turn? – podcast

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For the hardline conservatives ruling Poland and Hungary, the transition from communism to liberal democracy was a mirage. They fervently believe a more decisive break with the past is needed to achieve national liberation. By Nicholas Mulder

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Poland backs down in row with EU over disciplining judges

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Warsaw says it will shut down supreme court chamber that Brussels says is a breach of EU law

Poland has told the European Union it will shut down a chamber at its supreme court devoted to disciplining judges, an issue that has been at the heart of a dispute between Warsaw and Brussels.

The Polish government said on Tuesday that it sent a letter to the European Commission on Monday, the for Warsaw to inform the EU’s executive branch of how it would proceed with the disciplinary chamber after the EU’s top court said the chamber undermined judicial independence and contravened EU law.

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Polish appeals court overturns ruling against Holocaust historians

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Case has raised questions about freedom to research Poland’s wartime past

A Polish appeals court has overturned a ruling against two leading Holocaust historians accused of defamation, in a closely watched case that raised questions about the freedom to research Poland’s second world war past.

The civil case was brought against Prof Barbara Engelking and Prof Jan Grabowski for a book they co-edited about the complicity of Catholic Poles in the genocide of Jews during Nazi Germany’s occupation of Poland.

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Australia secures 1m Pfizer vaccine doses from Poland, with half earmarked for Sydney Covid hotspots

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530,000 of the new doses to go to 20-to-39-year-olds living in the 12 hotspot LGAs as NSW struggles to contain outbreak

One million additional doses of the Pfizer vaccine are on the way to Australia, after the Polish government answered the Morrison government’s international pleas for help and as New South Wales authorities struggle to contain the state’s Covid outbreak.

A total of 530,000 of the new doses, due to arrive in Australia late on Sunday, have been quarantined for use in NSW for 20-to-39-year-olds living in the 12 hotspot Sydney local government areas.

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Poland’s president signs bill to curb claims on property seized by Nazis

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Move to limit Jewish people’s opportunity to seek restitution sparks furious response from Israel

Poland’s president has decided to sign a bill that would set limits on the ability of Jews to recover property seized by Nazi German occupiers and retained by postwar communist rulers, drawing fury from Israel, which said the law was antisemitic.

“I made a decision today on the act, which in recent months was the subject of a lively and loud debate at home and abroad,” Andrzej Duda said in a statement published on Saturday. “After an in-depth analysis, I have decided to sign the amendment.”

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Polish government’s media bill is latest move to silence its critics

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Analysis: legislation is likely to target US-owned broadcaster as press freedom continues to deteriorate

In 2015, the year that the populist Law and Justice party (PiS) came to power in Poland, the country ranked 18th – its highest ever position – out of 164 countries on Reporters without Borders’ (RSF) annual World Press Freedom Index.

By this year it had fallen to its lowest ever position, 64th, continuing an annual slide that has left it just below Malawi and Armenia, in 62nd and 63rd, and just above Bhutan and Ivory Coast, with a classification from RSF of “problematic”.

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Poland’s coalition under threat as parliament votes on media bill

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Government confident of winning vote despite losing majority after coalition partner walks out

The future of Poland’s three-party coalition government has been thrown into doubt as parliament votes on Wednesday on a controversial media ownership bill that could lead to the country’s largest remaining independent TV station losing its licence.

After a night of protests in Warsaw and 80 other towns and cities against the bill, which opponents see as an attempt to silence an often critical broadcaster, the government said on Wednesday it was confident of winning the vote.

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Belarus sprinter who fled to Poland tells compatriots ‘not to be afraid’

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Krystsina Tsimanouskaya has arrived in Poland under diplomatic protection after seeking help in Japanese airport

A Belarusian sprinter who took refuge in the Polish embassy to avoid being bundled on a plane back to Minsk has spoken out about her dramatic experience, telling Belarusians “not to be afraid and, if they’re under pressure, speak out”.

In her first press conference from Poland, where she arrived under diplomatic protection this week, the Olympic athlete Krystsina Tsimanouskaya said she had decided not to return to Belarus after her grandmother told her by telephone that she had been slammed on television as a traitor and called “mentally ill” for criticising her coaches’ “negligence”.

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Anger as Poland plans law that will stop Jews reclaiming wartime homes

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Daughter of Holocaust survivor pledges to continue her fight for family property seized by Nazi occupiers

A few years ago, Shoshana Greenberg stood outside a building in Lodz, Poland, once owned by her family, with an old photograph in her hands and tears running down her face.

Greenberg, now 74 and living in Tel Aviv, was on a quest to reclaim property lost during the Holocaust. Her father was head of a prominent, wealthy Jewish family in Lodz that owned industrial buildings, residential homes and holiday properties.

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EU launches legal action over LGBTQ+ rights in Hungary and Poland

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Ruling is part of ongoing fight for rule of law and freedom from discrimination in heart Europe

The EU executive has launched legal action against Hungary and Poland to defend LGBTQ+ rights in the latest battle over values with the two nationalist governments in central Europe.

The announcement that Hungary and Poland’s governments could end up in the EU’s highest court is part of an ongoing existential fight for the rule of law and freedom from discrimination in the heart of Europe.

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‘Legal Polexit’: Poland court rules EU measures unconstitutional

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European court of justice had demanded suspension of Polish reforms that could lift judges’ immunity

Poland’s top court has ruled that measures imposed by the European court of justice against the country’s controversial judicial reforms are unconstitutional, in a decision that could have far-reaching implications for the bloc’s legal order.

Judge Stanislaw Piotrowicz said on Wednesday that Poland’s constitutional court had reached a majority verdict that EU measures regarding the “system, principles and procedures” of Polish courts were “not in line” with the Polish constitution.

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Malawi Pride and press freedoms in Palestine: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Chile to Cambodia

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