Polish opposition condemns police raids on organisers of Independence March

Polish opposition leader Jarosław Kaczyński has condemned yesterday’s searches by police of properties linked to the annual Independence March. He called on supporters to join a demonstration next week “against this attack on Polish patriotism”.

Prosecutors say the raids were carried out as part of an investigation into suspected crimes committed at the march, which is organised every year on 11 November – Poland’s Independence Day – by far-right groups but which also attracts participants from the mainstream right.

However, Kaczyński, leader of the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, characterised the development as part of efforts by the government to “pacify” the population and thereby make it easier to bring Poland under foreign rule.

On Thursday morning, Robert Bąkiewicz – a former organiser of the Independence March who last year stood as an election candidate for PiS – announced on social media that his home had been searched by police.

The same day, searches also took place at the Independence March Association’s headquarters in Warsaw as well as at the home of Mateusz Marzoch, the head of the march’s security force and an assistant to Krzysztof Bosak, one of the leaders of the far-right Confederation (Konfederacja) party.

Prosecutors issued a statement confirming that the searches had taken place in connection with an investigation into alleged crimes at the 2018 march.

They said that recordings appeared to show a member of the march’s security force making a criminal threat of violence against another person and that chants by participants constituted an unlawful threat against an individual or group due to their national, ethnic, racial, political or religious affiliation.

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Bąkiewicz condemned the actions of the authorities as “banditry” and news of the raids was also quickly criticised by figures on the Polish right, including both Confederation and PiS. At a press conference on Friday, Kaczyński then addressed the issue in more detail.

“It is obvious that the law and the constitution are being broken, that we have a state of lawlessness in Poland,” declared the PiS leader, repeating regular accusations he has made against the more liberal coalition government that replaced his party in power in December 2023.

He argued that the Independence March should not bother “any normal government, but today we have a government…that wants to implement the interests of another state, the German state”, he added, again echoing regular claims that Prime Minister Donald Tusk represents German interests.

The actions against the march are “an attempt to pacify a country that is to be deprived of independence”, continued Kaczyński, quoted by the Rzeczpospolita daily. This would be done, he said, by reform of the EU treaties that would make “Poland an area inhabited by Poles but governed from outside”.

Kaczyński called on people to attend a protest “against breaking the law, but also against the attack on Polish patriotism”, outside the justice ministry on 14 September. The PiS chairman also announced that he would attend this year’s Independence March, which would be only the second time he has done so.

However, the prosecutors’ actions were defended by members of the ruling coalition, which ranges from left to centre-right. “No one is above the law in a democratic state, Bąkiewicz too,” tweeted Tomasz Trela of The Left (Lewica).

“The impunity of people like Bąkiewicz is ending,” tweeted Dariusz Joński, an MEP from Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition (KO). Joński noted that groups linked to Bąkiewicz had received millions in funding under the PiS government.

The Independence March has long attracted controversy. It has often been accompanied by acts of violence, including clashes with the police. That has led some – including the mayor of Warsaw, where the march takes place – to seek to have it banned. However, the event has also passed peacefully in some years.

Supporters of the march claim that violence has been the result of “provocateurs” deliberately sent to cause trouble and tarnish the event. They also note that the vast majority of participants – who number at least tens of thousands each year and include many families – march peacefully.

In a separate case, Bąkiewicz was last year convicted for a “hooligan act” of violence against a woman during protests and counter-protests relating to the introduction of Poland’s near-total ban on abortion in 2020.

Main image credit: TG Sokół Lublin/Flickr (under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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.