Poland's descent into authoritarianism

[Beorning]

I know I've been making posts about things happening in Polish politics for some time - mostly in the News thread... Still, everything going on here is really making me furious and down, so I'd thought I could make a separate thread. Because things are getting really crazy here recently and I need to get this stuff out of my system. Please tell me people outside Poland care about what's happening to us...

Basically, Poland really, really doesn't seem to be a democratic country under the United Right coalition (which constitutes the Law & Justice (PiS) party and some small satellite groups). Three recent examples:

1. In the last days, more and more proof surfaces that the government was using the Israeli military-grade spy software (Pegasus by NSO Group) to hack the phones of its political opponents. The most important victim revealed (so far) is Krzysztof Brejza, who was the chief of staff of the biggest opposition party (Civic Platform) during the 2019's parliamentary elections. Aaaand... surprise! When did the hacking happen? Exactly during the election campaign! I mean... Watergate, anyone?

2. Leaked e-mails of high-ranking government officials revealed a case when these officials remained in direct contact with the head of Polish state-owned TV (TVP - which, by law, is required to be an impartial news source). And they directly discussed organizing smear campaigns against specific people the government didn't like - like a judge who issued a verdict that the government didn't like.

3. A more local case, but a really shocking one, IMHO (this is going to be long): a few months ago, a group of political activists closely associated with the ruling party organized an act of "fixing a historical untruth" that turned into vandalism. See, here in Warsaw we have these stone memorial tablets commemorating the victims of Nazi occupation. There are under 200 tablets like that in various location of the city (on building walls etc.) and they commemorate people who died there on some specific occupation day (as you may know, Germans used mass executions as a way of punishing Poles for resistance). These tablets are an established element of the Warsaw cityscape (they are over 70 years old) and still important to people (there are still memorial candles being lit there etc.).

So, what did those government-affiliated activists do? See, their problem was that the text of the tablets didn't mention "the German occupation". Instead, it mentioned "the Nazi occupation" (specifically, the term used was "Hitlerist occupation"). They claimed these tablets were an act of falsifying of history, which is nonsense (they were erected a few years after the war, back then everyone knew who the Nazis were!). So, they... "fixed" them. They went all over the city and glued some ugly foam "correction" mini-tablets to replace the word "Hitlerite" with "German". By doing that, they physically damaged these antique tablets, as they used some glue that bonded with stone etc. They damaged about 140 tablets that way, with the estimated cost of fixing them being around 200 000 USD.

Of course, the relevant city authorities notified the police - it was an obvious case of organized and costly vandalism. The police investigated the matter and... in the end of the year, they concluded they had to close to investigation without prosecuting anyone. Because (they stated so in the official documentation!) they were unable to find out who vandalized these tablets. Which was a blatant lie, because the people who did it went public and even appeared in pro-government media, bragging about their awesome "patriotic" act! This was a case of the police openly killing the case for political reasons... Aaaaargh!

So, to summarize these three cases:

1. The government uses military-grade surveillance software to spy on the opposition members, i.e. during the elections.

2. Polish state media are now a puppet of the government, organizing smear campaigns on the government's call.

3. The police refuses to investigate obvious crimes of people or organizations associated with the government.

This is... horrid. Is this a democratic country anymore? I don't think so...

... and you know what? This repulsive government still holds about 30% of support in election polls!

We're doomed...     

[Beorning]

I found some English-language articles on the first two topics.

Here's the latest bit of news I could find regarding the Pegasus scandal. It came right after Jarosław Kaczyński (the leader of PiS and the self-proclaimed "saviour of the nation") admitted that Poland has (or had - according to other news, NSO Group recently blacklisted Poland as a client) access to Pegasus:

https://tvn24.pl/tvn24-news-in-english/pis-party-chief-kaczynski-admits-poland-purchased-pegasus-spying-software-5551492

Some earlier news - on how the public prosecutors don't want to investigate this situation:

https://tvn24.pl/tvn24-news-in-english/polish-prosecutors-decline-to-investigate-phone-hacking-allegation-5542966
https://tvn24.pl/tvn24-news-in-english/polish-senator-says-prosecutors-dragging-feet-over-phone-hacking-with-pegasus-5541872

As for the TVP smear campaigns:

https://notesfrompoland.com/2022/01/04/polish-pms-advisor-asked-state-tv-to-attack-court-that-issued-negative-ruling-according-to-email-leak/

People in the US might be interested especially in the second part of the article, which deals with the Polish government planning to destroy the political career of an US senator. Because that senator criticised the PiS government...

[Beorning]

If I may continue the thread...

Two more people have been confirmed to have been spied upon by the PiS government using the Pegasus spyware:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/two-more-poles-identified-as-victims-of-hacking-with-spyware/2022/01/25/f0bc5848-7e13-11ec-8cc8-b696564ba796_story.html

Neither of these two men are known to be under any kind of criminal investigation. So, it's becoming blatant that the government *was* using Pegasus simply to spy on people they considered threatening to their interests...

On another note, Jarosław Gowin, the leader of a small party that has been part of the PiS government (they left the United Right coalition only a few months ago) confirmed something chilling... that, during last year's protests against the new anti-abortion law, some people in the government (Kaczyński himself?) considered sending the military to quell the protests.

Wow. 

Please tell me the world cares about any of this...