Donald Tusk’s government is set to adopt a “National Strategy on Combating Antisemitism and Fostering Jewish Life 2025-2030,” which is intended to implement the EU document of the same title. The strategy is extremely comprehensive and provides for systemic legal changes concerning the police, the prosecution service, the courts, and local governments; the monitoring of the media, schools, and cultural institutions; and the implementation of mechanisms for intensive support of non-governmental organizations. Of particular concern are the directive, addressed to the entire state apparatus, to monitor extremist groups committing antisemitic crimes, and the implementation of mechanisms for monitoring all media.
Censorship under the pretext of combating antisemitism
According to a declaration by Donald Tusk’s government, the “National Strategy on Combating Antisemitism and Fostering Jewish Life 2025-2030,” which implements the EU document of the same title, is to be adopted later this year. Dozens of politicians and commentators commented on the document based on the assumptions published by the government. It wasn’t appropriate for us to speak up before we had familiarized ourselves with the entire project. After two weeks, experts from the Ordo Iuris Institute obtained from the Chancellery of the Prime Minister the full text of the previously unpublished Strategy.
While supporting the religious life of the citizens of the Republic of Poland should not raise any objections, this document has entirely different objectives. Unfortunately, it is clear from it that the government of Donald Tusk treats antisemitism as a pretext. The true goal of the strategy of Poland’s left-liberal government is to coordinate criminal policy, censorship, and discrimination against patriotic communities. Moreover, shedding crocodile tears over a single religious community while, through government decisions, “sawing away at Christians” (to quote the expression used by a prominent politician member of Donald Tusk’s party, as a declaration of intention when they were still in the opposition)—by denying them religious education in schools and driving Christian identity out of the public sphere—smacks of a dictator’s grim joke.
The strategy is extremely comprehensive and provides for systemic legal changes concerning the police, the prosecution service, the courts, and local governments; the monitoring of the media, schools, and cultural institutions; and the implementation of mechanisms for intensive support of non-governmental organizations. The government resolution mentions giving priority to the handling of antisemitic crimes through separate prosecution procedures, broad public campaigns about the phenomenon of antisemitism, and educating politicians and officials. Of particular concern are the directive, addressed to the entire state apparatus, to monitor extremist groups committing antisemitic crimes, and the implementation of mechanisms for monitoring all media.
We have published the entire document on our website (in Polish), and we will publish its detailed analysis very soon. Since the government wouldn’t release the strategy, Ordo Iuris did! Our experts will closely monitor the implementation of the strategy. We will intervene with regard to any bill implementing the strategy that poses a threat to freedom of speech, conscience, and religion, or that is an expression of the government’s Christianophobia, labeling devout Christians as antisemites to justify surveillance of the political opposition to the government.
The government of Donald Tusk wants to limit the protection of Christians.
The degree of involvement of Donald Tusk’s ministers in defending Jews living in Poland perfectly illustrates the double standards of the Polish government’s members, who at exactly the same time are putting forward an initiative… to restrict the protection of Christians!
To the list of the Council of Ministers’ legislative work, there has already been added a draft amendment to the Penal Code, which provides for the removal of imprisonment from Article 196 of the Penal Code, which penalizes insulting religious feelings. The provision, which has in any case been partly a dead letter for years, is now set to be further relaxed. The authorities want malicious disruption of Holy Mass or vulgar mockery of Christian symbols to carry only symbolic penalties. This is an obvious incentive for perpetrators!
The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights is urging the authorities to go even further in reducing protections for Poland’s Christians, and it considers the Justice Ministry’s proposal a positive but insufficient step. The foundation is openly urging the authorities to repeal Article 196 of the Penal Code in its entirety and to allow anti-Christian desecrations.
Interestingly, even in the case law of the Strasbourg Court, the view has been expressed that laws protecting faith are necessary to safeguard religious peace. It’s no wonder that they are in force in most European countries and are enforced, for example, in Italy, Austria, and Germany.
Ordo Iuris lawyers are monitoring the Ministry of Justice’s work on an anti-Christian project. In the analyses we are preparing, we will present a number of substantive arguments in favor of protecting Christians. We will put pressure on those in power, members of parliament, and senators, and if that is not enough, we will urge the President of the Republic of Poland, Karol Nawrocki, to veto a harmful bill that undermines the defense of Christian sacred values.
Tusk’s government downplays crime targeting Christians
The government’s draft bill restricting protection for Christians is not the only bad news. The Report of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) on hate crimes committed this year lists 79 hate crimes against Christians in Poland. However, as it turns out, exposing the true scale of crimes in the OSCE report is the result of systematic reporting by Ordo Iuris, because the Polish police recorded last year… just one such crime!
If it weren’t for the work of our analysts, who every year submit to the OSCE a report on hate crimes committed in Poland against Christians, the world would be told that Christians in Poland are practically not a target of aggression at all. Thanks to Ordo Iuris’ efforts, the OSCE report lists 79 cases of desecration, vandalism, and destruction of Christian churches, chapels, statues, crosses, and cemeteries, as well as physical assaults on the faithful and priests.
Polish priests are victims of anti-Christian aggression
While Jews are safer in Poland than throughout Western Europe, the situation for Christians is steadily worsening. This is revealed by the report “A Dangerous Mission? Aggression against clergy, places and objects of worship” (Niebezpieczna misja? Agresja wobec osób duchownych, miejsc i obiektów kultu) published by the Institute for Catholic Church Statistics, which indicates that nearly half of Catholic priests in Poland were victims of aggression in the past 12 months. Importantly, the level of aggression toward Christianity is already so high that priests say they feel less safe when leaving the parish wearing a cassock!
That is why it is so important today that every priest and member of the faithful who becomes a victim of anti-Christian hatred knows that they can always count on free legal assistance from Ordo Iuris attorneys.
Recently, our attorneys have, among other things, become involved in the case of the murder of the parish priest of Our Lady of Fatima Parish in Kłobuck. The priest was strangled in the garage of the parish rectory shortly after he announced at Mass that he had collected 80,000 zlotys during the Christmas pastoral visits. The first court hearing in this case took place in mid-December.
The Mayor of Legnica unlawfully removed the cross from the City Council chamber
We are also intervening in Legnica, where the mayor, Maciej Kupaj—without consulting the councilors and the city’s residents—removed the cross from the Legnica City Council chamber. The crucifix had been there for nearly 30 years. It was hung in 1997 pursuant to a unanimous decision of the City Council and blessed by the priest of one of Legnica’s parishes.
President Kupaj, affiliated with Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition party, justified his decision in an official statement by citing the need to maintain “ideological neutrality” in public buildings. His decision faced strong opposition from residents and some councilors. Ordo Iuris lawyers provide legal assistance to protesters.
Let’s defend the rights of Christians
Thanks to the work of Ordo Iuris lawyers, Poland continues to be a country where people of faith can enjoy freedom of religion, practicing their religion peacefully and safely.
However, the growing violence against Christians and the tacit approval by left-wing media and politicians of attacks on what is sacred to Christians may soon change this state of affairs.
Advocate Jerzy Kwaśniewski – President of the Ordo Iuris Institute.
Source of cover photo: Ordo Iuris
