Poland
Recent stories
Two Cabinet ministers linked to anti-Semitism and xenophobia
On 5 May, a new coalition government was formed between the ruling Law and Justice Party, the populist and nationalist Self Defence and the League of Polish Families (LPR).
15 May 2006 (210 words)
Canary Islands nationalists warn of 'stealth immigration'
'Immigration is totally out of control in the Canary Islands,' said nationalist party CCN's president Ignacio González in a speech in January in which he demanded borders be sealed 'as is normal in any other developed nation'.
30 January 2006 (93 words)
Neo-Nazis raid Chechen camp
A camp of Chechen refugees twenty miles from Warsaw was attacked by neo-Nazis on 22 September.
25 August 2004 (72 words)
Catholic fundamentalist parties score well in Euro elections
A number of far-Right and Catholic fundamentalist parties contested the Polish election, with the Self-Defence of the Polish Republic, which has been accused of anti-Semitism, making an electoral breakthrough with 11.6 per cent of the vote, and a total of seven seats in the parliament.
1 June 2004 (117 words)
Warsaw: Jewish community protests dissemination of anti-Semitic materials
The Jewish community in Warsaw is taking a case to the European Court of Human Rights to protest against the Polish judiciary's refusal to prosecute organisations disseminating anti-Semitic material.
21 November 2003 (142 words)
Issues in the EU referendum
Nationalist, Christian fundamentalist and racist parties were active in the run-up to the Polish referendum on entry to the European Union.
10 June 2003 (149 words)
Focus on Polish nationalism
The League of Polish Families (LPR), an electoral party which received 8.7 per cent of the vote in the 2001 general election, does not normally feature in discussions of the extreme-Right. But, its increasingly anti-liberal, anti-Semitic and anti-European stance, which is backed up by the Catholic private radio station, Radio Maryja, is bringing it to international attention.
17 July 2002 (303 words)
Police condemned for failure to investigate racist attacks
AI is concerned that the police do not treat racial violence seriously and that minorities do not have sufficient protection against racism.
1 January 2002 (169 words)
Football association declares sport free of racism
The president of the Polish football association has denounced anti-racist associations for publicising the fact that there is widespread racism, fascism and anti-Semitism at Polish football grounds.
1 January 2002 (166 words)
Campaign for jailed anti-fascist
A campaign has been launched to support anti-fascist Tomasz Wilkoszewski who was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for murder after a street fight resulted in the death of a Nazi sympathiser.
1 January 2002 (85 words)
The extreme-Right and the general election
According to Rafal Pankowski, writing in Searchlight, the poor results for the fragmented and divided extreme-Right in the Polish general election of 23 September should not hide the fact that the far-Right has made deep inroads into general Polish politics to the extent that some mainstream political parties do not hesitate to strike deals with extremists.
1 January 2002 (67 words)
Revisionist professor sacked
Professor Darius Ratajczak, convicted last year for Holocaust-denial, was sacked from his post at the University of Opole and banned from teaching anywhere in Poland for three years.
1 January 2001 (84 words)
Polish anti-Semitism spotlighted
Football culture is anti-Semitic
1 August 2000 (248 words)
Poland's sole anti-fascist magazine under threat
Poland's only anti-fascist publication, Nigdy Wiecej (Never Again) is under increasing threat from far-Right activists and legal suits.
1 August 2000 (197 words)
Saga of Auschwitz crosses finally ends
New government legislation, which creates a 100-metre protection zone around all former Nazi concentration camps, has enabled police and army troops to remove more than three hundred home-made crosses from Auschwitz after a year-long dispute with Roman Catholic fundamentalists over their right to place religious symbols at the site of a former convent.
1 November 1999 (133 words)
Government minister openly airs racist and neo-fascist views.
The minister for families, Kazimierz Kapera, caused outrage when he called for the introduction of special measures to protect the 'dominance of Europe's white races'.
1 November 1999 (88 words)
Skinhead arson attack on Roma home not racist, say police
A 13-year-old Roma girl suffered serious burns and was left in a critical condition after a skinhead threw a gas cannister through the window of her home in Bytom, south-west Poland in September 1998.
1 July 1999 (67 words)
Polish slave labourers demand compensation for Nazi crimes
In the run-up to the 60th anniversary of Poland's invasion of Germany, members of the Polish association of former political prisoners in Nazi jails and concentration camps have launched a legal suit for compensation, demanding almost £1 billion in damages from the German government and threatening individual suits against the biggest names in German industry if their action fails.
1 July 1999 (71 words)
Many Roma deported after police raids
There has been more criticism of Poland's OBCY (alien) law after 370 Romanian Roma were deported in October from Kochtowice, Opole region, and after police raids of workers' hostels in towns in the southern region of Katowice led to the arrest of 150 people, many of whom were Roma, and one third of whom were minors.
1 July 1999 (70 words)
Catholic anti-Semitism criticised as committee formed to defend the Papal Cross
Any reconciliation between Jewish and Catholic groups seems to have been dashed by the simmering row over the Papal Cross at Auschwitz.
1 March 1999 (509 words)
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