Three high-school students have been found guilty in court of insulting the president. Though the crime can carry a prison sentence of up to three years, the trio have been sentenced to two months of community service.
The incident in question took place in June last year, when the president, Andrzej Duda, was standing for re-election and the three teenagers – aged 18 and 19 at the time – were attending an outdoor party to celebrate the start of the summer holidays.
During the festivities, the trio tore down an election campaign banner featuring the president and shouted vulgarities about him, including “f**k Duda” (“j***ć Dudę”). One of them also cut the banner with scissors, reports Wirtualna Polska.
A local politician from the nationally ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party was informed about the incident by her son, who had attended the party. She reported it to police, who also received a recording of what had happened.
The trial of the three men – named only as Mikołaj S., Makary M. i Wojciech R. under Polish privacy law – began in March this year, and yesterday the court found them guilty. They were sentenced to 40 hours of unpaid community over two months and each fined 90 zloty (€20).
That was less than the six months of community service requested by prosecutors, who also wanted the teenagers to each be fined 500 zloty (€111). The defendants had argued that they should be acquitted. It is not yet known if either side will appeal the ruling.
“The right to criticise may not become the right to formulate invectives, especially against the head of state,” said the judge, Katarzyna Maciaszek, quoted by Głos Wielkopolski. “On the scale of vulgarity, the words spoken by the accused rank at the top.”
The trial is the latest in a series of recent prosecutions invoking Poland’s law against insulting the president, which was also used under previous presidencies, including those of Bronisław Komorowski and Lech Kaczyński, Duda’s predecessors.
In March, a 20-year-old woman was found guilty after shouting “f**k Duda” at a protest. However, she was also awarded compensation for being illegally detained by police over the incident. The same month, a prominent writer was indicted for insulting the president by describing him as an “idiot” in a social media post.
Last year, a man was given six months’ community service and an order to refrain from drinking alcohol after drunkenly drawing a penis on a poster of Duda and writing “five years of shame” in reference to his first term as president. Another man was charged over a banner saying “We have an idiot for a president”.
The ban on insulting the president is one of a wide range of defamation and insult laws in Poland, which are among the broadest and strictest in any democratic country, according to a study by the OSCE.
In recent years, there have also been a growing number of indictments for the crime of “offending religious sentiment”, which can be punished with up to two years in prison.
Earlier this month, an evangelical pastor was found guilty of offending the religious feelings of Catholics as well as of insulting the Polish nation, the president and Catholic objects of religious worship.
Main image credit: Dawid Zuchowicz / Agencja Gazeta
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
