The government’s majority in parliament has voted to strip an opposition MP, Joanna Scheuring-Wielgus, of legal immunity so that she can face prosecution for offending religious feelings, a crime in Poland that carries a sentence of up to two years in prison.
Another opposition MP, Borys Budka, was set to face a similar vote but decided instead to voluntarily give up immunity to face an indictment for criminal defamation filed by an MP from the ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party.
Prosecutor General Zbigniew Ziobro has requested an opposition MP's immunity be lifted to face charges for an abortion protest in a church.
She is accused of the crimes of "offending religious feelings” and “maliciously interfering with a religious act" https://t.co/0I5qYHiwrl
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) December 21, 2020
The case against Scheuring-Wielgus, an MP from The Left (Lewica), stems from her participation in a protest during the mass wave of demonstrations against the constitutional court ruling of October 2020 that introduced a near-total ban on abortion.
Scheuring-Wielgus and her husband, Piotr Wielgus, were among a group of protesters who entered a church in Toruń – the same one they had married in 17 years earlier – during Sunday mass and held up signs calling for abortion to be the decision of women rather than of “the state in support of Catholic ideology”.
In December 2021, prosecutor general Zbigniew Ziobro, who is also justice minister, filed a request for Scheuring-Wielgus’s parliamentary immunity to be waived so she could face charges of offending religious feelings and maliciously interfering with the public performance of a religious act.
Speaking in support of lifting her immunity, Zbigniew Dolata, a PiS MP, said that failing to do so “could encourage further violations of the freedom of religious worship, further incursions into churches, which would have a destructive impact on the social order and hit the foundations of the Polish state”.
In response, Scheuring-Wielgus said that it was not her who brought politics into the church, “it was done by priests, bishops and PiS politicians”. Church figures have spoken in favour of the near-total abortion ban and PiS has close links to the church.
In a vote yesterday evening, a majority of 236 MPs in the 460-seat Sejm voted to lift her immunity. Most of those votes, 227, came from the PiS caucus, with the remainder from smaller right-wing and far-right groups. Centrist and left-wing parties voted against the motion.
Earlier this year, the government’s majority also voted to strip Scheuring-Wielgus of immunity to face charges over her participation in a protest against alleged cover-ups of clerical child abuse cases by the Catholic church.
Piękne ❤️💪 dziękuję! https://t.co/qPwQp6LAY8
— J. Scheuring-Wielgus (@JoankaSW) November 4, 2022
Yesterday evening, another vote was meant to take place to strip immunity from Budka, who is the head of the parliamentary caucus of the centrist Civic Coalition (KO), the largest opposition group.
He has been accused of criminal defamation by PiS MP Joanna Lichocka in relation to an incident in parliament in February 2020 when Lichocka was pictured raising her middle finger towards the opposition. Many believed she had been making an offensive gesture, but she denied it.
After the incident, billboards appeared around Poland showing the image and suggesting that Lichocka and PiS had chosen to give more money to state TV – a government mouthpiece – rather than for cancer treatment.
Lichocka pozwała za billboardy, na których pokazuje Polakom środkowy palec. Twierdzi, że te poniżyły ją w oczach opinii publicznej. Dzięki Lichockiej nie zapomnimy, jaką patologię stanowi finansowanie mediów – skomentowali pozew organizatorzy.@Eksperci_WSB pic.twitter.com/noALmk9OyS
— Jan Świderski 🇪🇺📌 (@swiderski_jan) February 27, 2021
In response, Lichocka filed a private indictment against Budka, arguing that the party he led at the time, Civic Platform (PO), had been responsible for defaming her by “spreading information that was untrue”, reported Onet. She also applied for Budka to be stripped of his immunity.
Just as a vote on that was about to take place yesterday evening, Budka went to the rostrum, demanding a break in the session and to be able to speak about the issue. At the same time, opposition MPs waved copies of the image of Lichocka displaying her middle finger.
After the speaker of the Sejm, Elżbieta Witek of PiS, refused to agree to a break, Budka handed her a statement in which he himself waived his immunity, meaning a vote did not need to take place.
Source: TVN24 (screenshot)
Main image credit: Klub Lewicy/Flickr (under public domain)
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.
