Warsaw’s nationalist Independence March in doubt after courts give anti-fascist event right to route

Warsaw’s Independence March – which is Europe’s largest annual rally organised by the far right – has been thrown into doubt by a series of court decisions that have given an anti-fascist event the exclusive legal right to use the march’s planned route.

The municipal authorities say that the nationalist march cannot now go ahead as planned and that they expect the police to intervene if necessary. City hall is under the control of Poland’s centrist opposition, and Warsaw’s mayor has repeatedly called for the Independence March to be banned.

However, the main organiser of the march, a prominent far-right leader, says that it will go ahead anyway along the traditional route. A deputy minister from Poland’s national-conservative government has also said that he supports the right of the march to be held.

The march, which takes place to mark Independence Day on 11 November, attracts up to 100,000 participants. In some years, it has ended in violence, including against police; at other times it has passed peacefully, though still with the presence of antisemitic, Islamophobic and anti-LGBT banners and chants.

Previously, the march had been classified as a “cyclical gathering”, a legal status that gives certain privileges to regular events. Among them is precedence over any other events taking place on that site.

However, Warsaw’s mayor, Rafał Trzaskowski, argued that the Independence March had lost its cyclical status because it was not allowed to take place last year due to the pandemic (though the event went ahead anyway, leading to clashes with police).

Trzaskowski therefore challenged the decision of the provincial governor, Konstanty Radziwiłł, to grant the march cyclical status again this year. Radziwiłł is a government appointee and member of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, while Trzaskowski is deputy leader of Civic Platform (PO), the largest opposition group.

On 27 October, a court in Warsaw agreed with Trzaskowski and overturned Radziwiłł’s decision to grant the march cyclical status. That ruling was challenged by the organisers of the march, but on 29 October an appeals court upheld the decision of the lower court.

That ruling in itself does not ban the march from taking place, as it can still be registered as a normal (non-cyclical) event. However, a group of anti-fascist activists known as “The 14 Women From the Bridge” a few weeks ago registered their own event to take place on the route of the Independence March.

Those women came to prominence at the 2017 Independence March, when they sat on its route in protest and were physically attacked by some participants. The women were later fined for interfering with a legal assembly, though that punishment was subsequently overturned after a lengthy legal process.

As long as the Independence March had cyclical status, that gave it precedence over the Women from the Bridge’s event. But, now that it has lost that status, a court has confirmed that the women’s event can take place on the route, Warsaw city hall announced yesterday.

The mayor’s spokeswoman, Monika Beuth-Lutyk, told Gazeta Wyborcza yesterday that there is currently no legally registered Independence March. But the main organiser of the march, far-right leader Robert Bąkiewicz, has indicated that they will simply ignore the court rulings and go ahead with the march anyway.

“Independence Day will not be taken away from us by the judicial caste or the rainbow [i.e. LGBT-supporting] Trzaskowski,” tweeted Bąkiewicz. “We invite [participants] to Roman Dmowski roundabout [from where we] will walk to the National Stadium [i.e. the traditional route of the march].”

Trzaskowski, however, says that “if the nationalists gather on 11 November, it will be illegal”. He added that “full responsibility for preventing demonstrations lies with the police”.

Asked about how they would handle the situation, police spokesman Sylwester Marczak told Gazeta Wyborcza only that “there is still a lot of time until 11 November” and that for the time being the police’s focus was on maintaining order during the current long All Saints’ Day weekend.

Trzaskowski and his predecessor as mayor, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz (also of PO), have long tried to prevent the Independence March from taking place. Earlier this month, Trzaskowski said that one of the three main groups behind the event bears “the hallmarks of fascism”. Promoting fascism is illegal in Poland.

He was referring to National Radical Camp (ONR), a far-right group that seeks an “ethnically homogeneous” Poland and which the Supreme Court ruled this year can be called “fascist”.

Bąkiewicz previously served as leader of ONR. Since leaving, he has established a number of other nationalist organisations that have received state financial support from a fund overseen by the culture ministry.

Government ministers and other leading PiS figures have defended the Independence March, calling it a patriotic event, rather than a nationalist one.

After attacks on police at last year’s event, a deputy prime minister claimed – without presenting evidence – that the violence had been caused by “provocateurs”.

This week, the head of PiS’s parliamentary caucus, Ryszard Terlecki, told wPolityce that the participants in the march “are not troublemakers”.

A deputy culture minister, Jarosław Sellin, said that there are “many families with children, with prams, etc.” who see the march as “a good way of demonstrating their patriotism”, reports Polska Times.

“I support the possibility of organising such a march, because it is something that has always been legal,” he added.

On Thursday, after the first court ruling rejecting the march’s cyclical status, an MP from Poland’s ruling coalition, Janusz Kowalski, tweeted that “THE INDEPENDENCE MARCH WILL PASS” nonetheless. “No temporary official from the rainbow-EU town hall will tell patriots whether they can celebrate INDEPENDENCE.”

Main image credit: Agata Grzybowska

Daniel Tilles

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.