ODR: INVESTIGATION

Leaked police data reveals level of violence against protesters in Belarus

Over the past two months, Belarus has witnessed unprecedented violence against protesters in the aftermath of its presidential election. New data confirms its scale.

Media Zona
3 November 2020

Illustration: Maria Tolstova / Mediazona

“Everyone was on their knees, they kept on cramming people into the bus. And then the violence started. The riot police officer said that we had to get up as fast as we could, grab our things and leave the bus. And they started beating people until they stood up. One of them would hold someone while the other beat them. They were just beating and saying: ‘What did you want, bitch, change?’”

This is how one resident of Minsk describes his arrest on 9 August. Alongside thousands of others, journalist Alyaksei Khudanau had gone out to protest against Belarus’ election results after Alyaksandr Lukashenka had been declared the winner.

Official results awarded Lukashenka 80% of the vote, but a significant number of Belarusians believe that the results were falsified, and that Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the only independent candidate, is the real winner of the election. Other candidates were forced to either leave the country or have been arrested, including Tsikhanouskaya’s husband, popular video blogger Siarhei Tsikhanousky.

The protests have not let up since. Every week, tens of thousands of residents of Minsk, the capital, and other cities come out onto the streets to protest against Lukashenka, who has been in power for 26 years. In Minsk, the numbers of attendees have exceeded 100,000 - a huge figure for a city of two million. In response, Belarusian police have used riot batons and water cannons to disperse people. The EU has now sanctioned Belarusian officials for election falsification and police violence.

The police response was particularly brutal immediately after the election. In the days after 9 August, masked police officers detained people across Minsk, shooting flash grenades and rubber bullets at crowds, beating people on city streets, police vans and police stations. Several people died amid the violence: a special forces officer shot protester Alyaksandr Taraikousky dead in Minsk; in Brest, a plain clothes police officer shot Hienadz Shutau, a biker; and Mikita Kryutsou, a football fan, died in unclear circumstances in the city of Maladzyechna (the official version is suicide).

The exact number of people who have suffered at the hands of the Belarusian police is unknown. Belarusian state agencies do not publish statistics on violent incidents involving the police, but as we have discovered - they do collect this information.

Mediazona, a Russian media outlet which focuses on the law and justice system, recently received a data archive held by Belarus’ Investigative Committee from an anonymous source. These documents consist of several spreadsheets containing information about individual instances of police violence, as well as inspections concerning reports of torture. Analysis of these documents shows that the minimum number of people injured by Belarusian police during protests in August and September 2020 is 1,373 people.

Meanwhile, Lukashenka refuses to negotiate with protesters. Instead, in his public remarks, he constantly thanks the Belarusian police. “You have stopped this trash on the clean, comfortable [streets] of Minsk,” Lukashenka said in late September. Indeed, the Belarusian authorities have opened a criminal case into an “attempted coup of state power” by members of the Coordination Council, set up by the Belarusian opposition - of whom many have fled the country or are now under arrest. Ordinary protesters are also facing criminal cases. According to human rights defenders, 435 people are facing prosecution as a result of Belarus’ election campaign and the ensuing protests.

Despite the large number of injuries, the Belarusian authorities have not opened a single investigation into violence committed by police officers.

In cooperation with Mediazona, openDemocracy publishes their investigation in translation here. You can read the full version here.

Akrestsina detention centre in Minsk, one of the main sites of violence against people detained during Belarus' pro-democracy protests | (c) Kommersant Photo Agency/SIPA USA/PA Images. All rights reserved

Why we trust this data presented by an anonymous source

Mediazona was already familiar with one of the documents in the archive - a spreadsheet of injuries inflicted by flash grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas. We had previously received this document from a different anonymous source. Part of the records were accompanied by the names of hospitals in Minsk where injured people were taken. We showed this information to sources in Minsk City Hospital No. 10 and the city’s clinical emergency care hospital. In the latter, our data matched the hospital’s entire list of patients for that time, whereas our source in Hospital No. 10 stated that two of the people in our list did not contact them for medical treatment.

Many of the more serious cases connected to protesters’ eye injuries, amputations, comas and deaths have been described by journalists previously, including by Mediazona. Descriptions of these incidents matched information held in our archive.

We also checked information concerning beatings at Minsk’s Akrestsina jail against prisoner lists compiled by the Viasna human rights centre. The team also showed the documents to a source in one of the Investigative Committee’s central directorates. They confirmed the spreadsheets and other documents were genuine.
How we analysed the severity of the injuries

The Investigative Committee’s documents report medical diagnoses given to protesters, and from the majority of diagnoses it is clear how exactly protesters were injured. We have visualised these injuries via silhouettes representing each of the 1,373 people injured.

We categorised injuries by severity - light injuries (1), medium injuries (2) and heavy injuries (3). If part of someone’s body was not injured, we indicated it (0 points). We also analysed injuries in terms of how they were inflicted - beating, rubber bullets, flash grenades or gas.

We categorised bruising, contusions and light burns as light injuries; lacerated wounds, head injuries and multiple traumas - medium; and firearm wounds, internal injuries, broken bones and amputations - heavy.

With the average age of an injured person coming to 31, young men were most likely to be injured at the protests. The worst injuries came from rubber bullets and flash grenades.

A selection of protesters coded according to their injuries 

| Illustration: Maria Tolstova / Mediazona

Belarusian police aimed for protesters’ vital organs

Judging by injuries caused by rubber bullets (40 cases), it is clear that police officers often shot people in the head, chest and stomach when dispersing protests - and these weapons caused the most serious injuries. On 10 August, 34-year-old Alyaksandr Taraikousky died from a rubber bullet shot to the chest - holding his hands in the air, he had approached special forces officers near the Pushkinskaya metro station in Minsk.

One 24-year-old protester received a rubber bullet to the stomach, leading to a hernia of the small intestine; another participant, a 37-year-old businessman, had his rib cage penetrated by a rubber bullet, causing damage to his right lung. Doctors diagnosed him with open pneumothorax, where air accumulates between the chest wall and lung after an open chest wound - which in serious instances can lead to a collapsed lung.

“I was in a coma for three days, but I was awake for a few moments. The doctors say it’s rare, but it happens,” recalled Alyaksandr Pastukhau, whose lung was penetrated by a rubber bullet. “I remember how they cut my clothes off. The doctors’ speaking when they tried to straighten out my lung during the operation. And how my brain was panicking: it’s sending signals, but my body isn’t responding. And it was terrifying that I could wake up with brain damage. It’s surprising that they shot from such a short distance at my chest. In a way, it’s good they shot me in the right lung. If they’d shot me in the left, we might not be speaking now.”

When police fired rubber bullets at protesters’ heads, they caused head traumas and broke facial bones. For instance, the data shows how a 40-year-old man wound up in hospital with the following diagnosis: “closed head trauma, concussion, multiple gunshot injuries to the right jaw.” His rib cage, stomach and left thigh were also injured. Another protester, 29, was hit by a rubber bullet, which smashed through his maxillary sinus, just behind his cheek, fracturing his nose. Another person was shot with a rubber bullet in the eye, receiving a serious contusion.

Why does the Belarusian Investigative Committee hold data on injured persons and how many people were injured?

It is impossible to give an overall number of people injured at protests in Belarus. The data we received only relates to the situation in Minsk, although police used violence to disperse crowds in other cities. The data in our possession shows instances where law enforcement received information from a hospital or an injured party contacted them to report physical harm.

A source in Minsk City Hospital No.10, which received a large number of injured persons during the protests, explains that doctors contact the police regarding all incidents of physical violence. An emergency service worker in Minsk confirms this procedure: “If we write a diagnosis such as closed head trauma, dislocation, broken bones and so on in our call-out cards, you need to indicate how the injury was caused. We just put down ‘criminals’ and wrote that, according to the patients, the injuries were caused by police officers, riot police and traffic police.” According to this source, this kind of information is automatically passed on to the police, and doctors have to later give statements.

Other protesters may have received injuries that did not require treatment in hospital, or could have contacted volunteer medics for help. Many people injured during the protesters did not contact the Investigative Committee - some may have thought it pointless, others may have feared criminal prosecution. There are cases where an official complaint led to a criminal case against someone injured during the protests - for example, this happened to Anastasia Dudina, whose eardrum was injured after a flash grenade exploded nearby. After leaving hospital, she wrote a complaint to the Investigative Committee, and then became a suspect in a criminal investigation into “mass unrest”.

This situation encourages people to go into hiding, leave the country or not contact Belarusian law enforcement. The 1,373 injuries in our archive are therefore only a minimal estimate of the numbers of injuries. In reality, there are definitely more.

How flash grenades injured protesters

Flash grenades were used en masse during the first days of the protest, and would explode at thigh level or lower when they hit crowds of people, leaving injuries across a person’s whole body - while the grenade’s shock wave led to serious bruising and head traumas.

Indeed, grenades used by Belarusian police caused no less serious injuries than rubber bullets. When a flash grenade exploded near one 30-year-old man, the explosion ripped off his right foot. For two other protesters, flash grenades broke a finger on their left hand, their left foot and their calf bone - shattering these bones into multiple pieces. A flash grenade also fractured a vertebra in a 33-year-old man’s lower back.

For one injured man, a fragment of a flash grenade entered his chest, leading to pneumothorax.

“I live near the Pushkinskaya Metro,” says Heorhiy Saikousky, a Minsk resident who lost a foot to a flash grenade. “On 10 August, I was coming home around 11pm with some friends. I heard some explosions, but I didn’t have internet access on my phone, and I didn’t understand what was going on. Suddenly I saw the police. They were around 100 metres from me. As far as I could tell, the protesters were near the Ice palace [an indoor sporting arena in Minsk], but there was no one really near me. I couldn’t have predicted that a flash grenade would fly into this empty space.”

Most people injured by riot equipment came to hospital straight off the street, avoiding police stations and detention centres. The more seriously injured people were sent to a military hospital, while the rest were divided between city hospitals and Minsk’s emergency hospital.

“We saw a lot of multiple injuries,” an emergency service worker tells us. “These are always closed head traumas and then different combinations: broken ribs, shoulder bones, hip bones, or broken extremities. Bruises, blunt force injuries, scratches - we weren’t coding these, we just described where they were.”



Video showing Belarusian police using flash grenades to disperse protesters in Minsk, on the evening of election day, 9 August
Most people were beaten after being detained by police, not during street clashes

More than half of the injuries took place in police vans, police stations and detention centres in Akrestsina and Zhodzina - that is, when people were not resisting the police, let alone represented a risk. Many were beaten on several occasions - during detention, then in the police van or station, and then in the detention centre. In many cases, this torture went on for several days.
Police specifically beat detainees on the head and buttocks

After being beaten at the Akrestsina detention centre and police stations, detainees were released with head traumas and bruising to their spine, abdomen, shoulders, buttocks and thighs. Around 200 people received head traumas and concussions. Some detainees were placed face-down on the floor or with their faces against the wall, and were then beaten with riot sticks. On 11 October, the NEXTA Telegram channel published a video showing how detainees were forced through a column of police officers, who beat them as they went.

More than 25 people contacted hospitals with broken bones and serious injuries. One young man, 21, was beaten until the main airway in his left lung was ruptured, causing air to escape from his lungs into his chest cavity. Another man the same age received two broken ribs. Indeed, the latter’s whole body was covered in bruises - his chest, back, thighs, knees, shoulders and left hand.

Injuries connected to sexual violence

Three detainees received injuries consistent with sexual violence either at the Akrestsina detention centre or en route there. A 31-year-old man was hospitalised with intramucosal hemorrhages of the rectum, a 29-year-old man had an anal fissure and bleeding. A third party, a 17-year-old man, received - aside from other injuries - an injury to his rectal mucosa.

Ales, a 30-year-old programmer (whose name has been changed), told journalists how he was raped. “The riot police demanded that I unlock my phone, and then called the senior officer. He started threatening me with inserting a riot stick into my anus. I was lying on the floor of the police van, and he cut my shorts and underwear open. He asked his colleagues for a condom. I was lying on the floor face-down, but I could see how he put the condom on the riot baton. And then he inserted it into my anus. He pulled it out and then asked for the password again. And then he began beating me - punching and kicking. I was hit in the ribs, the face, my teeth - two of them were broken.”

10 August: violence on the street - followed by beatings at Akrestsina detention centre, police stations

In Minsk, police organised the most brutal dispersal of protesters on 10 August. On city streets, not counting beatings in police stations and Akrestsina detention centre, 291 people received injuries. That day also saw mass detentions, with more than 3,000 people arrested. In the days after, law enforcement would beat detainees again and again.

Siarhei (name changed) was detained on 10 August, and recalls how he and other detainees were brought to Akrestsina. “When we were released [from the police van], they didn’t explain the rules - you couldn’t look around, they would just hit you and say: ‘Run!’ You run on, they beat you and say: ‘Get down!’ Then you run on and they hit you: ‘Hands behind your back!’ People didn’t understand where they’d ended up, but first they beat you, then they explain. By that point every one had been beaten - perhaps lightly, but still.”

People were then lined up on their knees along the wall in the Akrestsina detention centre yard.

“We ran out of the van and stood next to the fence on our knees,” Siarhei continues. “On our knees. Those who were beaten in the legs could not physically get on their knees and had to sit down. And then they were beaten with riot batons for that. They beat them until they themselves realised that someone couldn’t get on their knees, or they just dragged them away when someone fell.”

The next eruption of violence came on 13 September during a march on the Belarusian government residential compound in Drazdy just outside Minsk. For the first time in a month, more than two dozen cases of violence were reported in our data - and that’s when our data ends.

Belarusian law enforcement beat everybody, including women and teenagers

Violence by Belarusian security forces was conducted en masse and was not selective: officers did not try to suppress specific groups of people whom they considered a threat, but attempted to beat everybody they found.

Alyaksandr Lukashenka and Belarusian state propaganda insisted that the election rallies were attended mostly by drunks and drug users. “Some people are high, a lot of drunks, people with drugs,” is how Lukashenka described protesters immediately after the election. The data in our possession disproves this claim: the number of people whose diagnoses refer to intoxication is insignificant - less than 2%. There are no references in the medical reports of drug use.

The data refers to at least 24 injured persons under 18. They were beaten exactly the same as adults: under-age persons received concussions, cuts and bruises. One 17-year-old, Timur, was beaten to the extent that he had to be placed in a medically-induced coma.

The data refers to 57 women injured during the protests. The oldest of them is 72: on 12 August, police officers beat her near the investigative detention centre on Minsk’s Volodarsky Street, breaking her wrist. Women were subject to torture following detention, too. Judging by the seriousness of the injuries, it’s clear women were beaten exactly the same as men.

As far as we understand, not a single criminal investigation has been opened into the actions of Belarusian law enforcement during the protests. The Minsk Prosecutor’s Office refused to state whether torture committed in the Akrestsina detention centre is being investigated, stating that information was “for internal use”.

On Sunday 11 October, Belarusian law enforcement once again resorted to brutal detentions and beating protesters. The country’s deputy interior minister stated that the police are ready to use lethal force.

Since then, Belarusian authorities have dispersed Sunday protests in the country forcefully, but people continue to attend them. On 1 November, Minsk witnessed a “March against terror” - participants aimed to visit Kurapaty, a Soviet execution site outside the capital. The authorities, however, responded with force, and have charged more than 200 detainees as part of an investigation into “mass unrest” during the march.


Editor: Dmitry Treshchanin

Text: Maxim Litvarin, Anastasia Boiko, Yegor Skovoroda

Graphics: David Frenkel, Nikita Shulaev

Illustration: Maria Tolstova

Analysis: Yegor Skovoroda, Maxim Litavrin, Anastasia Boiko, David Frenkel, Dmitry Treshchanin, Anastasia Poryseva, Khatima Mutaeva, Viktoria Rozhitsyna, Mikhail Lebedev

Translation: openDemocracy

The enduring creativity of the #FreeBelarus movement
November 7, 2020
Portia Kentish


Portia Kentish


With most of the world focused on the US presidential election and the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, the struggle for freedom in Belarus has faded into the background. But the innovative resilience of the country’s opposition movement is not something to be forgotten about.

For the past few months, ever since a rigged presidential election in August, Belarusians have endured harrowing repression in their fight for democratic freedoms. Hundreds of thousands of protesters have nevertheless defied the brutal actions of the country’s security forces to take to the streets of the capital Minsk, where artists and activists have joined forces with factory workers and civil servants to demand a new, free, and fair election.

Yet, as their fight continues, their oppressor is continuing to develop both covert and overt means of repression, with President Alexander Lukashenko showing no signs of backing down.

Belarusians have not given up hope

Just last week, opposition leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, by any objective measure the winner of August’s election, called for a nationwide general strike, after a demand for the president’s resignation fell on deaf ears. Once again, however, the authorities cracked down brutally, forcing many to return to work, and beating or arresting those who didn’t. Restaurants which came out on strike have since been closed down due to “health and safety” regulations. On social media, multiple videos have surfaced of Belarusian security forces storming into apartments in search of protesters, including pensioners and the disabled.

For many on the ground, the immediate cause for optimism that the protests offered back in August have since been replaced by the realisation that bringing about change will be a long haul. Mr Lukashenko himself has promised limited change and reform, although few – unsurprisingly – are taking his word for it.

In what often gets called “Europe’s last dictatorship”, protests have become as routine as their repression, and the country’s security forces aren’t showing any signs of relenting. In this, however, Belarusians are showing extraordinary creativity to ensure the movement does not get suffocated.

Many are using the encrypted messaging app Telegram to keep up the pressure, which has been a driving force of organisation for the opposition. Since the initial protests in August, many groups have localised, into cities, townships, sometimes even apartment blocks.

Through Telegram, anything from the distribution of pamphlets and ideas, to concerts and lectures have been organised, in a desperate bid to keep up momentum, and most of all, hope.

Changes

In the northern suburbs of the nation’s capital, a courtyard protest venue has sprung up, chosen for a mural symbolic of the opposition movement. It shows two DJs who, after being hired to perform at a pro-Lukashenko gathering, instead played the 1989 track Peremen (Changes) by Viktor Tsoi, symbol of a resistance against authoritarianism in the region. The square has since been unofficially renamed Changes Square, where musicians give concerts most weekends.

For many, this not only boosts morale, but provides a creative outlet. Similarly, the Belarusian rock band Dai Darogu! (Дай Дарогу!) recently released their seventh studio album, their most political yet, denouncing police brutality and aiming to capture the defiant spirit of protest. The band, which formed in the western city of Brest in 1998, aimed to once again use art as a defiant voice.

Yuri Stylsky, the band’s lead singer, dedicated their album, called Under the Howling of Dogs to “all the honest, courageous, sincere and fiery hearts” across his homeland. The album cover, illustrated by Ania Crook, echoes this sentiment, detailing a crowd of anti-government protesters.

Similar work has popped up all around the country, as artists continue to channel their talents into political resilience. A great example of this is the Belarusian art magazine, Chrysalis, which has developed an online ‘protest art’ exhibition of works from all around the country. The magazine, which virtually showcases work through its website and Instagram account aims to develops Belarus’s creative economy by providing an international platform for arises to express themselves, has given space for visual artists to speak out against repression, since the beginning of the #FreeBelarus movement.

“Contemporary art is completely absent in the concept of development of Belarus, but we believe that a healthy society cannot exist without it. Just like the economy, it cannot be successful without the creative part, while the situation in Belarus is critical and continues to degrade,” write the magazine’s editors. “We see a way to develop an intelligent economy and creative professions in the revival of Belarusian contemporary artists.”

‘Ordinary people commit evil’

These exhibitions have not only included illustrations and paintings but banners, photography, graffiti, and even tattoos, many of which feature the red and white motif of the old Belarusian flag that has become another symbol of the opposition. Many, such as this illustration by Yuliya Arabei emphasise the power of the people within the protest movement. Others aim to shed light on the injustice of police brutality, and the role of the security forces as “puppets” of the regime, such as this work by Katya Klitos.

Chrysalis has also used the movement as a way to highlight the pertinence of older works, such as this 2012 installation by Tima Radha called Stability, which alludes to similar themes of authoritarian state power built on violence and repression.

Young Belarusian artist Andrey Anro has taken a slightly different approach in his contribution to art pieces of the movement. His latest series called Person of the System instead aims to shed light on those contributing to keeping the Lukashenko regime in power.

“As Hannah Arendt wrote, ordinary people commit evil, accepting the order established in society as a norm and conscientiously fulfilling the obligations prescribed by the current law,” says Anro.

For those out on the streets, bringing a rucksack of essential items to every protest in case of arrest, the solidarity provided by Belarusian artists is ensuring that the movement endures.

The creativity of the opposition, whether that be via the use of Telegram to organise localised protests and concerts, or the visual art that speaks a thousands words, is all about sustaining the voice of those asking for freedom.

Why war-torn east Ukraine votes for pro-Russian parties

UkraineAlert by Mykhaylo Shtekel

A Ukrainian soldier pictured close to the frontline of the Russo-Ukrainian War in eastern Ukraine. (REUTERS/Baz Ratner)

Pro-Russian candidates and parties achieved considerable success in eastern Ukraine during nationwide local elections held on October 25. In towns and cities throughout the region, Moscow-friendly political forces claimed the lion’s share of the vote and maintained their traditional dominance over the political landscape.

This result was widely expected. Despite the close proximity and heavy emotional toll of the six-year Russo-Ukrainian War, political loyalties in the region have changed little since the prewar era. Young voters remain deeply disillusioned and inclined to abstain, while the elderly electorate continues to dutifully back the kind of paternalistic pro-Russian parties that have long held sway in these parts.

Nowhere is the resilience of Ukraine’s pro-Russian vote more apparent than in Slovyansk. Six years ago, this city of a little over 100,000 people served as the initial focus of Kremlin efforts to spark a massive anti-Kyiv uprising throughout eastern and southern Ukraine. For three months beginning in April 2014, it was the de facto capital of Novorossiya (“New Russia”), the client state that Moscow intended to create from the ruins of independent Ukraine.

During the Russian occupation of Slovyansk, the city suffered an array of horrors including mass expropriation of businesses and property, arbitrary arrests and detentions, forced labor, torture, and executions. The nightmare finally ended in July 2014 when Ukrainian forces liberated Slovyansk. It has remained at peace ever since.

This experience has scarred the city in many ways, but it has made relatively little impact on the political landscape. A clear majority of local citizens still feel strong ties to Russia, while suspicion of Ukrainian political parties in Kyiv runs deep. These preferences were on display during the recent local election, which saw a pair of pro-Russian politicians make it through to this month’s runoff vote to choose the next mayor of Slovyansk.

The two candidates are incumbent mayor Vadim Lyakh (Opposition Bloc party) and his challenger Pavlo Prydvorov (Opposition Platform-For Life party). Prydvorov is the former secretary of Slovyansk City Council. He also served briefly as acting mayor in the immediate aftermath of the city’s liberation in 2014.

Both politicians attended Slovyansk City Council sessions at the time of the Kremlin takeover in spring and early summer 2014, and are accused of backing the creation of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic. Neither has ever faced charges over their involvement in the Russian proxy regime that ruled the city during those fateful months.

This lack of criminal prosecutions is a common theme in the liberated parts of eastern Ukraine, where many local officials initially backed the Kremlin uprising but have since managed to remain in office by making themselves useful to the Ukrainian government in Kyiv. Lyakh was elected mayor of Slovyansk in 2015, while Prydvorov became a member of the city council at the same time.

Among the many local officials in eastern Ukraine who stand accused of supporting the Russian invasion of 2014, the most notorious is arguably former Slovyansk mayor Nelya Shtepa. In late 2014, she was charged with separatism and organizing a terrorist group. Shtepa spent three years in custody before being placed under house arrest in 2017. Six years on, her case is still in court, but she is no longer subject to any restrictions.

Shtepa has remained defiant throughout, and has sought to portray herself as something of a martyr. She even campaigned in the recent election to win her old job back, finishing third and narrowly missing out on a place in the coming head-to-head vote between the two front runners.

The dominance of pro-Russian politics in Slovyansk creates obvious challenges for the city’s considerable contingent of pro-Western residents and supporters of Ukraine’s European integration. Local activist Dmytro Braslavsky says most of Slovyansk’s European-leaning voters will now back current mayor Vadim Lyakh, who he calls “the lesser of two evils.”

Braslavsky believes voter apathy is one of the key obstacles faced by pro-Western politicians seeking to make inroads in eastern Ukraine, and claims few residents of Slovyansk appreciate the significance of local elections. This is especially true among younger demographics, he says.

“It is still very hard to explain to people that the municipal authorities are more important for everyday life in Slovyansk than either the president or parliament,” explains Braslavsky. “Young people in particular did not vote in the first round, and it is likely that turnout in the second round will be even lower. They could have made a difference if they had backed the more pro-Western candidate from the Servant of the People party. Instead, elderly voters have once again determined the outcome of an election in Slovyansk. No wonder we are still ruled by the same political class as before.”

Local ecological activist Kapitalina Pasikova shares many of Braslavsky’s concerns and admits to feeling depressed following the October 25 vote. She argues that a mood of resignation prevents Slovyansk residents from becoming engaged in efforts to bring about meaningful change, and points to local elections five years ago as a key turning point for many local people that crushed fledgling hopes of a new beginning. “When the city was first liberated in 2014, lots of activists initially emerged,” Pasikova recalls. “We believed this was our city. We felt it was up to us to make things better. But the 2015 local elections were devastating. Everything remained the same and all the old faces returned to power.”

Thirty-something Slovyansk resident Ksenia is wary of speaking publicly about the political climate in the city and asked not to use her full name. She claims the atmosphere is becoming increasingly uncomfortable for those who support Ukraine’s westwards geopolitical trajectory. “Many pro-European people are now looking to leave Slovyansk, and some would like to leave Ukraine entirely.”

Ksenia herself says she has no such plans, and would prefer to build a future in her home town. She was not at all surprised by the results of the recent local elections and favors a pragmatic approach, arguing that anyone planning to remain in Slovyansk must adapt to existing political realities rather than pinning their hopes on change. “I am certainly not waiting for any miracles from politicians,” she quips.

Despite the gloomy mood among many in Slovyansk’s pro-Western community, the political atmosphere in the city is not entirely unchanging. During his past five years in office, Mayor Lyakh has begun to tentatively embrace a number of more pro-European positions, according to political analyst and Slovyansk resident Denis Bigunov. This attempt to claim the middle ground makes perfect sense politically, says Bigunov. “Lyakh received around 30% of votes in the first round of the recent local elections, while the leading pro-Western candidate from the Servant of the People party secured almost 15%. By demonstrating that he does not intend to be a strictly pro-Russian politician, Lyakh hopes to gain pro-European votes in the second round while maintaining his traditional support base among pensioners.”

The advances made by Euro-friendly candidates during the recent local elections in Slovyansk are still far too modest to worry the city’s pro-Russian political heavyweights. Nevertheless, there are numerous similar signs of a gradual shift taking place across the region, beginning with President Zelenskyy’s remarkable performance in 2019’s presidential and parliamentary elections, and continuing in the stronger-than-expected recent showing in parts of eastern Ukraine by former president Petro Poroshenko’s European Solidarity party.

If this is evidence of a changing political landscape, it is taking place at near-glacial pace. In reality, it may take decades before the balance of power shifts decisively away from a political status quo rooted in traditional notions of strong ties with Russia.

This is only natural, says Bigunov. He argues that Slovyansk and other cities in eastern Ukraine lack the historical ties that bind much of central and western Ukraine to a broader European political culture. Instead, the far younger settlements of the east have known nothing but authoritarian rule for more than a century. Czarist autocracy was followed directly by Bolshevik totalitarianism. The eventual collapse of the Soviet Union then led to a new era of regional dominance by Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. Genuine democracy did not reach Slovyansk until summer 2014, when it arrived together with the Ukrainian Army.

Six years on, pro-Russian parties continue to dominate political affairs in the city, much as they do elsewhere in eastern Ukraine. However, the region’s pro-Western electorate is slowly finding its voice and gradually becoming a factor to be reckoned with in the electoral calculations of rival candidates. This is undermining the monopoly on power that once stifled public debate. A more pluralistic political culture is slowly taking shape, but pro-Russian parties will likely remain in the ascendancy for a long time to come.

Mykhaylo Shtekel is a journalist with Radio Svoboda.

THE RIGHT TO BE LAZY

The Bulgarian city of Plovdiv has an almost untranslatable word – “aylyak” – that manifests as a refusal to get caught up in the rat race and a scepticism about the value of overwork.

By Will Buckingham

5 November 2020

Bulgaria’s second city of Plovdiv is proud of its reputation for doing things its own way. As soon as you step off the bus from the capital of Sofia, you can feel the change in pace of life. People walk more slowly. They seem to have more time on their hands. The traffic is less hectic. As you walk to the city centre through the park, where old men gather to play chess and people lounge and chat in the shade of the old trees, Plovdiv immediately feels different. There’s a kind of insouciance to Plovdiv, something that is both immediately apparent and hard to put your finger on.

In the downtown Kapana district, people spill out of bars and cafes into the pedestrian streets. Under brightly painted murals on the walls, groups of young people hang out, flirt and check their phones. In the cafe by the Dzhumaya Mosque in the town centre, people sit for hours and sip cups of Turkish coffee. Even the cats in the cobbled streets of the old town seem more languid than elsewhere. They stretch and purr, then they roll over and go back to sleep. If you ask the people here why the city is so relaxed, they will tell you: Plovdiv, they will say, is “aylyak”.



Plovdiv is Bulgaria’s second-largest city and one of the oldest cities in Europe

 (Credit: Nataliya Nazarova/Alamy)

The word “aylyak” is not much used outside of Plovdiv, even though it appears in Bulgarian dictionaries from the late 19th Century. It is a loan-word from the Turkish “aylaklık”, which means “idleness”, “dawdling” or “vagabondage”, and it’s rooted in the Turkish “aylık”, meaning “month”.

According to Yana Genova, director of the Sofia Literature and Translation House, the original meaning of aylyak was somebody hired to work month-by-month, who consequently knew what it was to have time on their hands. The verb that goes with aylyak is “bichim”, a derivative of the verb “bicha”, which means to strike, to whip, or to cut beams and boards from a tree trunk. The idea of striking, whipping or cutting is a reminder that aylyak is something active. If you want to practice aylyak, you have to slice out chunks of time for yourself. You must take the initiative to sever yourself from your daily concerns.

But whatever the origins of the word, in contemporary Plovdiv, aylyak has taken on its own meaning and significance, something not to be translated so much as lived. When you ask people to explain what it means, more often than not they will tell you a joke. The joke goes like this. A citizen of Plovdiv is hanging out with a Spanish visitor to the city. “What is aylyak?” the Spaniard asks. The Bulgarian thinks for a few moments, and then says, “It’s like your mañana, mañana, but without all the stress.”

In 2019, Plovdiv shared the title of European Capital of Culture with Matera in Italy. As a part of the City of Culture activities, one organisation – the Fire Theatre Mime Company, headed by Bulgarian actor, director and mime artist Plamen Radev Georgiev – ran a series of public consultations to explore aylyak in more depth. He wanted to know what aylyak is, what its origins are and how it became so closely associated with Plovdiv.



Plovdiv was awarded the title of European Capital of Culture in 2019

(Credit: Mehdi33300/Alamy)

I caught up with Georgiev in a cafe in Sofia. He was born in Stara Zagora, about 80km to the north-east, and when he arrived in Plovdiv in 2018, it was as an outsider to the complexities of aylyak culture. “Our research was difficult,” he told me. “People asked why we were interested in aylyak. They said it wasn’t a value at all. It was just laziness.”


It’s like your mañana, mañana, but without all the stress

But through the public discussions, a broader picture emerged. Aylyak, people said, was about finding time. It was about sitting down for breakfast with friends and finding that you were still hanging out by nightfall. It was about taking pleasure in your environment. It was tied in with social status, with a kind of dandyish wandering the streets with nothing to do. And, on a deeper level – Georgiev called this “Zen aylyak” – it was to do with freedom of the soul. “Aylyak means that you can be engaged with the difficulties of life, but you remain safe from all life’s problems,” he said.

In Sofia, many people I spoke with were sceptical about aylyak, seeing it as nothing more than Capital of Culture branding or hipster marketing. I, too, was unconvinced. So, I caught the bus from Sofia to Plovdiv, to spend several days in the city and whip some aylyak of my own. In Plovdiv, I talked to Dr Svetoslava Mancheva, an anthropologist and director of ACEA Mediator, an organisation dedicated to linking communities and urban spaces. Originally from Kardzhali in the country’s south-west, Svetoslava is a self-confessed convert to aylyak. She has been living in Plovdiv for 10 years and has no intention of leaving. “Many people come to live here specifically because it is aylyak,” she said. Her colleague, Elitsa Kapusheva, told me she was brought up in Plovdiv but recently moved back from Berlin. She was glad to be home, she said: Berlin was good, but it wasn’t aylyak.



The city has a uniquely relaxed vibe, with locals taking time to slow down and enjoy life (Credit: ICP/Alamy)

For Mancheva, aylyak is rooted in Plovdiv’s long history of cultural diversity. The historian Mary C Neuberger describes how the city was a thriving commercial hub in the 19th Century. Of all the cities in the Ottoman Empire, it was second only to Istanbul, and was home to Jews, Greeks, Bulgarians, Roma, Armenians and Slavs, crowded together in the streets and kafenes, or coffeehouses. Mancheva says that aylyak was a response to the challenges of living alongside strangers. “It’s about finding a space of your own in the city,” she said. “For me, the ground of aylyak is communication. You don’t need to like each other. What matters is the will to talk, the desire to understand.”

Historical accounts of Plovdiv’s coffeehouses in the 19th Century describe them as places where artisans and merchants mingled and where time passed slowly. The 19th-Century Bulgarian poet Hristo Danov wrote disapprovingly of how people spent all day in kafenes. People go to the kafene, he wrote, to smoke, talk, drink coffee, and “impatiently wait for the sun to set so they can move on to plum brandy”. Outsiders also picked up on Plovdiv’s uniquely relaxed feel. In his 1906 travel account, the British traveller John Foster Fraser was entranced by the pace of life in Plovdiv (then called Philippopolis):

“Picture the scene. A garden, lit with many lamps. Beneath the trees innumerable tables. At the tables sat ‘all Philippopolis,’ sipping coffee, drinking beer, toasting one another in litres of wine. At one end of the garden was a little stage. There was a Hungarian band which played rhapsodically… It was Sunday night and Philippopolis was enjoying itself.”



Plovdiv's 2nd-Century AD amphitheatre is one of the best-preserved ancient theatres in the world (Credit: Evgeni Dinev Photography/Getty Images)

As I chatted to Mancheva and Kapusheva about aylyak, they returned again and again to one idea. Aylyak is about finding space. It is about finding space in a busy day to drink coffee. It is about finding nooks and crevices in the city – alleyways, small parks, benches – where you can hang out with friends, play music, drink beer or chat. It is about making space for others when you communicate. And, as Georgiev told me, it is about finding a space of freedom in the middle of life’s difficulties. For those who have developed the knack, like Mancheva and Kapusheva, there is no better way of living.

Aylyak means that you can be engaged with the difficulties of life, but you remain safe from all life’s problems

After several days in Plovdiv, I lost my scepticism and learned how to bichim aylyak. I strolled the streets. I took it easy. And strangely, I found I got no less done, only everything was done with less stress. Towards the end of my stay, I wondered whether Plovdiv has something to offer the rest of the world. I emailed the Bulgarian writer Filip Gyurov, who researched aylyak as a philosophy of life and as an alternative to economic growth as part of his MSc thesis at Lund University. “It is not all about the hustle and bustle of the big city, the need to buy the newest tech toy, the need to always climb the social ladder,” Gyurov wrote to me. “People, especially young people, have experienced the awful side effects of burnout. Hence the need to slow down, to de-grow, to live more in sync with nature and ourselves.”

On my last afternoon in Plovdiv, I sat in the cafe outside the Dzhumaya Mosque. I ordered a Turkish coffee and a portion of kyunefe, a dessert that originated in the Middle East and that, in a stroke of culinary brilliance, combines baklava and cheese. The coffee arrived with a small glass of sweet rosewater syrup that took the edge off the bitterness. Beside the mosque, underneath the rose bushes, a ginger and white cat dozed peaceably. I didn’t have my watch. I felt no need to check my phone. I had no appointments to keep. I drank my coffee and let the afternoon unfold, knowing that I had all the time in the world.



Aylyak is rooted in Plovdiv’s long history of cultural diversity, when the city was a thriving commercial hub (Credit: Ivan Hristov/EyeEm/Getty Images)

Soul of the City is a series from BBC Travel that invites you to uncover the unique characteristics of cities around the world through the stories of the people who live there.

Paul Lafargue: The Right To Be Lazy (1883)

www.marxists.org › archive › lafargue › lazy

Nov 13, 2003 — (1883). Written: Saint Pélagie Prison, 1883. Source: The Right To Be Lazy and Other Studies Translated: Charles Kerr First Published: ...

Defying Europe once again, Belarus plugs Astravets nuclear power plant into national grid
November 4, 2020
Craig Turp-Balazs


Craig Turp-Balazs

Impervious to international safety concerns, Belarus starts up its first nuclear power plant.

“Cynical ignorance” is how Lithuania’s foreign minister, Linas Linkevicius, described the news that a nuclear power plant in neighbouring Belarus had been put into operation on November 3.

The plant, at Astravets, which is less than 50 kilometres from the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, was connected to Belarus’ national grid just after midday, according to according to Belarusian electricity operator Belenergo. Lithuania, which has long been critical of safety standards at the Russian-built Astravets plant, responded by cutting off the import of electricity from Belarus just minutes later.

Latvia said it had also blocked imports of energy generated at the plant and vowed not to purchase Russian electricity if Moscow was unable to prove imports did not originate from the Belarusian plant.

Lithuania’s president, Gitanas Nausėda, called on the European Union to react “immediately” by closing the bloc’s entire energy market to what he called “unsafely produced” electricity from Astravets.

Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom, which built the plant, has rejected the Lithuanian claims that Astravets is unsafe, saying the design conforms to the highest international standards as confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN watchdog.

Rosatom also insists that it “has a zero-tolerance policy on corruption and an internal control system that ensures that any illegal or inappropriate practices are stopped and prosecuted.” It argued that the project’s launch would help reduce the region’s carbon emissions by up to 10 million tons of CO2 equivalent every year.

“We are working closely with Belarus’s national nuclear regulator, the World Association of Nuclear Operators, and with the EU’s European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group to make absolutely certain that there are no unaddressed risks or ‘threats to safety,’” Rosatom said in a statement issued to The Associated Press news agency. When fully operational in 2022, the nuclear plant’s two reactors are expected to produce up to 2,400 megawatts of electricity.

Rebecca Harms, a former MEP and outspoken critic of nuclear power, says that the plant did not pass the EU stress test, carried out in 2018, and that “some technical deficits are severe and cannot have been eliminated since then”.

However, in a statement for Emerging Europe, Rosatom says that Harms’ claims are not supported by evidence.

“On the contrary, the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group’s (ENSREG) peer-review has given the tests an ‘overall positive’ mark and provided the Belarusian regulator with recommendations to be included in the National Action Plan (NIA). ENSREG gives similar recommendations to all EU member states’ nuclear regulators. NIAs usually take from three to ten years to implement and the implementation of the NIA is not a condition on which licensing and operations of nuclear power plants in respective countries normally depend,” read the statement, which added, “It is also worth to note that Belarus voluntarily agreed to conduct EU nuclear safety ‘stress-tests’ and get the results peer-reviewed by the EU nuclear safety body, ENSREG, although as it was not part of the EU it didn’t have an obligation to do so.”

Latvian energy minister, Žygimantas Vaičiūnas, believes that Astravets could become a “bad” precedent for ignoring the recommendations of EU experts, while also discrediting international cooperation on nuclear safety issues.

“By commissioning the nuclear power plant without implementing the EU’s stress test recommendations, the EU’s political leadership in the region could be undermined,” he said in a call for the EU to get tough with Belarus in October.

Lithuania, which closed its own nuclear power plant at Ignalina in 2009, has already been preparing for a potential disaster at Astravets, buying millions of iodine tablets in the event of a radiation leak.

Belarus itself suffered severe damage from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which spewed radioactive fallout from a plant in then Soviet Ukraine across large areas of Europe.

Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, who by any objective measure lost a presidential election in August, has been eager to start up Astravets before November 7, the anniversary of the Russian Revolution and a national holiday, in order to distract attention from the widespread protests against his regime that have taken place ever since the rigged election.

At the weekend, Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya called on the EU to step up sanctions against the regime.

The EU last month imposed sanctions on around 40 individuals linked to Lukashenko, but she said Brussels needed to go further and target “people and companies supporting him”.

“This help is needed now. And if European countries, and all the countries supporting our movement, could move faster in their decisions, that would be wonderful,” she said.

Lithuania – and the other Baltic states – will meanwhile be hoping for a quick decision on a bloc-wide ban on the purchase of electricity from Astravets.

Remembering Hungary’s heroic revolution of 1956
November 7, 2020
Marek Grzegorczyk


Marek Grzegorczyk
Share This!


It was an early Sunday morning on November 4, 64 years ago. Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest to crush, once and for all, a national uprising. It is said that the soldiers – mostly originating from the Asian parts of the USSR – barely knew where they were or who they were fighting against.

About an hour later, Imre Nagy, the prime minister of the 1956 revolutionary government whose attempt to establish Hungary’s independence from the Soviet Union eventually cost him his life, made a dramatic radio speech:

“This is Imre Nagy speaking, chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Hungarian People’s Republic. In the early hours of this morning, Soviet troops started an attack on our capital with the obvious aim of overthrowing the legal and democratic Hungarian government… Our troops are fighting. The Government is in place.”

Freedom above all

Within hours, Mr Nagy had sought political asylum at the Yugoslav Embassy in Budapest.

Meanwhile, István Bibó, the minister of state at the time, a lawyer, political thinker, prolific essayist, persistent advocate of democratic values and the author of The Art of Peacemaking: Political Essays, wrote a proclamation. In it, he declared that Hungary had no intention of pursuing anti-Soviet policies and refuted the accusation that the uprising was fascist or anti-communist in sentiment. He also urged Hungarians not to recognise the occupying Soviet forces or a puppet government.

“I ask the great powers and the wise and brave decision of the United Nations in the name of the freedom of oppressed nations. God save Hungary!” his proclamation ended.

Hungarian radio went off the air at around 8am with a woman’s appeal to “help Hungary … Help, help, help…” In the mid-afternoon, a Vienna monitor picked up what was apparently the last rebel-held radio station in Hungary. It too broadcast repeated calls for help.

“Civilised people of the world. On the watchtower of a thousand-year-old Hungary, the last flames begin to go out. Soviet tanks and guns are roaring over Hungarian soil. Our women, mothers and daughters – are sitting in dread. They still have terrible memories of the army’s entry in 1945. Save our souls. This word may be the last from the last Hungarian freedom station. Listen to our call. Help us – not with advice, not with words, but with action, with soldiers and arms.”

The revolution was stifled within hours.

“The Hungarian counter-revolution has been crushed,” Moscow radio announced at about 1pm, adding that a new “Revolutionary Workers’ and Peasants Government” had been formed under János Kádár, the former “Titoist” who became first secretary of the Communist party at one point in the rebellion.

International idleness

Mr Nagy, before he disappeared, had appealed for immediate intervention by the United Nations. Some hours before, the Security Council had already met in special session in New York to discuss the situation in Hungary. The Soviet Union vetoed an American resolution calling on for an end to the intervention and the withdrawal of Soviet troops. The UN General Assembly, where the veto cannot be used, was promptly called to take up the Hungarian appeal.

US President Dwight Eisenhower sent an urgent message to Nikolai Bulganin, the prime minister of the USSR, asking him to withdraw the Soviet troops and to allow Hungary to choose its own government, but the message fell on deaf ears.

Hungarians continued to fight the Soviets over the next few days. The resistance finally ended on November 11. János Kádár gave his first radio speech as Hungary’s new prime minister, in which he declared the revolution to have been crushed.

The cost of the Soviet repression was high. Between October 23, 1956 and January 16, 1957, some 2,652 people died, 19,226 people were injured and about 200,000 more fled as refugees. They were welcomed as heroes across the world. Hungary’s own attitude towards refugees is today markedly different.

Nagy would eventually be arrested, having been betrayed by Kádár, who had offered him free passage if he left the Yugoslav Embassy. He was executed in 1958 and buried in an unmarked grave.

In 1989 Hungary’s now prime minister, Viktor Orbán – then an anti-communist activist – addressed a rally celebrating the reburial and rehabilitation of Nagy. In 2018 however, the Hungarian authorities removed a much-loved statue of Nagy that had stood since 1997 in front of Hungary’s parliament in Budapest. The statue was moved to Jaszai Mari Square, away from the parliament building. In its place is a memorial dedicated to the those killed during the Red Terror of 1919’s short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic. A similar memorial stood in the same place before World War II.

Hungary '56 - Andy Anderson - Libcom.org

libcom.org › library › hungary-56-andy-anderson

Mar 27, 2005 — Andy Anderson's pamphlet, written in 1964 and published by Solidarity is invaluable as a guide to the events of the Hungarian uprising of 1956.

A Polish blasphemy case tests the country’s commitment to freedom and tolerance
November 9, 2020
Craig Turp-Balazs


Craig Turp-Balazs

Three Polish women face trial – and the risk of up to two years in prison – for blasphemy.

A court in Plock, Poland, this week pushed back the trial of three LGBT+ activists to January, but the threat of a prison sentence remains for the three women, accused of “offending religious feelings by insulting an object of religious worship”.

In April 2019, Elżbieta Podleśna and two other activists – known only as Anna and Joanna – put up images of the Virgin Mary with a rainbow halo in protest at what they called the “exclusion of LGBT+ people from society” by the country’s Catholic church. The images were placed around the city of Plock in reaction to an Easter display which featured slogans about crimes or sins. Listed among the sins were “gender” and “LGBT”.

At the time, the Jasna Gora Monastery in southern Poland, where the image of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa — the one was used in the activists’ picture — is kept, said that the altered images had caused “great pain”.

Poland’s then interior minister, Joachim Brudziński, wrote: “All that nonsense about freedom and ‘tolerance’ does not give anyone the right to insult the feelings of the faithful”.

‘Drop the charges and amend legislation’

Podleśna was arrested in May 2019, following her return from a trip to Belgium and the Netherlands with Amnesty International. Police seized her laptop, mobile phone, and memory cards during a search of her home. She was held and questioned by police for several hours, but was released pending a full investigation. She – along with the two other activists – were formally charged in July this year under Article 196 of Poland’s criminal code, which states that a person may not “offend the religious feelings of others by publicly insulting a religious object or place of worship”. The offence carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison.

Unsurprisingly, human rights groups, including Amnesty International, Campaign Against Homophobia, Freemuse, Front Line Defenders, Human Rights Watch and ILGA-Europe, have called for the charges to be dropped.

They also believe that the Polish authorities should amend legislation to bring it in line with international and regional human rights standards and abstain from using it against activists to unduly curtail their right to freedom of expression.

The ‘offending’ icon. Photo: Elżbieta Podleśna (Facebook)

This looks unlikely in the current Polish political climate. In October, the country’s highest court ruled that abortion on the grounds of fetal defect was unconstitutional, while just this week parliament passed legislation that allows pharmacists to refuse to sell contraception.

According to Human Rights Watch, the case against the three women is not unique but an example of the repeated harassment activists and human rights defenders face simply for carrying out peaceful activism in Poland.

“They deserve to be praised, not taken to court for their activism,” says the organisation.

To date, around 140,000 people have joined an international campaign urging Poland’s prosecutor general to drop the charges.

“Given the complete lack of evidence of a crime here, it is clear that these three women are being tried for their peaceful activism,” says Catrinel Motoc, Amnesty International’s senior Europe campaigner.

“Having, creating or distributing posters such as the ones depicting the Virgin Mary with a rainbow halo should not be a criminal offence.”

Undue restrictions on freedom of expression

In its current formulation, Poland’s Article 196 imposes undue restrictions on the right to freedom of expression by providing overly broad discretion to the authorities to prosecute and criminalise individuals for expression that must be protected. This is incompatible with Poland’s international and regional human rights obligations.

Poland is bound by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the European Convention on Human Rights as well as the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU to respect, protect and fulfill the right to freedom of expression.

Furthermore, in 2013, the ICCPR’s special rapporteur in the field of cultural rights noted that restrictions on artistic freedoms based on insulting religious feelings are incompatible with its covenant. This was again highlighted in 2019 by the special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression who stressed that criminalising expression that insults religious feeling limits “debate over religious ideas and… such laws [enable] governments to show preference for the ideas of one religion over those of other religions, beliefs or non-belief systems”.

Freemuse, a Copenhagen-based organisation which defends the right to artistic freedom worldwide is particularly concerned about the policing of artistic and creative content by the authorities in Poland and regard it as an unlawful attack on freedom of artistic expression.

It says that according to international standards, restrictions on the right to freedom of expression must be provided by law and formulated with sufficient precision to enable an individual to regulate his or her conduct accordingly. The current formulation of Article 196 is not sufficiently precise, leaves space for arbitrary interpretation and allows authorities to arrest, detain, and prosecute people simply for expressing views that may be perceived by others as offensive.

A new clash with the EU?

Should Poland proceed with the prosecution, it could be setting up yet another clash with the European Union.

The European Court of Human Rights has long maintained that the right to freedom of expression “is applicable not only to information or ideas that are favorably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the state or any sector of the population”.

In September, ILGA-Europe – together with Campaign Against Homophobia and Fundacja Równości (The Equality Foundation) submitted a legal complaint to the European Commission about Poland’s so-called “family charters” and “LGBT-free zones”, which over 100 Polish local governments have adopted over the last two years.

The complaint sets out how these “family charters” and “LGBT-free zones” introduce discrimination against LGBT+ people and thus breach a European Council directive establishing a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation, as well as the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

At the same time, many Polish LGBT+ people have begun to write to the European Commission, often anonymously out of fear of further stigmatisation and hate, putting forward individual complaints about how they are being discriminated against in the cities that have declared themselves “LGBT-free zones” and adopted “family charters”. Over 400 individual complaints were sent to the European Commission by people sharing their fears for employment, health and life and their stories of discrimination in Poland.

ILGA-Europe and its partners claim that the aim of its complaint is to provide legal analysis of how “family charters” and “LGBT-free zones” do not, as claimed by Poland’s prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki in a recent letter to the European Commission, protect Polish families, but instead put in place active discrimination against LGBT+ people. Although there is no clear individual court case claiming discrimination in recruitment or employment at this point, the analysis shows clearly how the principles of the European Council’s directive and the Charter of Fundamental Rights are being violated.

According to Katrin Hugendubel, advocacy director of ILGA-Europe: “The European Commission and Council can no longer remain silent in the face of such blatant violations of the principle of non-discrimination by a member state. Our legal analysis of the texts of the family charter clearly dismantles their discriminatory nature. The European Commission is duty-bound to answer the Polish prime minister’s letter, clearly rejecting the argument of ‘defending Polish families’ and addressing the real harm that is being perpetrated on LGBT+ people in Poland. EU law is being violated and the EC needs to start infringement procedures.”

While the EU has yet to go as far as to begun such infringement procedures, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has offered support. In her State of the Union Speech on September 16, she declared that “LGBT-free zones have no place in the European Union.” This was something the LGBT+ community across the EU has been waiting for “and takes hope and courage in”, says ILGA-Europe.

It, and other human rights groups, will be hoping that any prosecution of Elżbieta Podleśna and her two co-defendants will bring about action to match the rhetoric.