Attacks
Professor of the Warsaw University Magdalena Sroda.
According to the annual report of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Poland, 1'365 reports on hate crimes were recorded in 2014. Of these, 46% belonged to crimes committed on the Internet. In 2015, 1'548 proceedings were initiated on the facts of xenophobic crimes.
According to the Report on the National Programme for the Equal Treatment 2014, issued in May 2015, there have been 314 events of hate crimes. 56 of them concerned the Roma community, 36 – anti-Semitism, 9 – people of Russian origin, 4 – Ukrainian, 2 – German, 2 – Armenian. Another 77 cases concerned racism (excluding ethnic and national minorities).
In 2014, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Poland, 778 hate crimes were recorded; in 2015 - 953. In 2015, 236 crimes were committed against Roma, 208 against Jews, 198 against Muslims, 166 against black people, 37 against Ukrainians, 12 against Germans and 10 against Russians. According to human rights organizations 22 crimes against LGBT were committed in 2014.
In 2013, 11 attacks were reported. LGBT, anti-fascists, Jews, Chechens and Roma were among the victims of nationalist attacks. On February 19, a group of 50 masked people, burst into the assembly hall of Warsaw University, where a lecture of professor Magdalena Schroda was supposed to take place. Attackers chanted “Fagots! Fagots” and “Once with sickle, once with hammer, the red rubble!” A fight broke out with university’s security . On March 9, nationalists tried to attack the visitors a charity concert in Wroclaw organised by anti-fascists . On March 12 there was an attempt to attack Israelis - Yeshiva students at the airport in Warsaw . On April 15, someone set fire to the door of an apartment in Zeleny Vzgorzhy in Bialystok. Only by sheer luck, there were no casualties .
In April 2013, the nationalists disrupted the LGBT Film Festival in Katowice and the meeting of the LGBT association “Iris” in Katowice .
On June 27 neo-Nazis attacked the visitors Torun cafe Draz, which is also visited by the anti-fascists . On August 22 it became known that Bauman, refused a title of honour professor at the University of Lower Silesia in Wroclaw because of the constant anti-Semitic insults received over the Internet . In early July an LGBT activist was beaten in Wroclaw . In October, there was an attack on a Roma family in Lodz.
On November 11, 2013 two squat house (illegally occupied premises, which are often used by anti-fascists as their headquarters) in the centre of Warsaw, were attacked by nationalists and fascists. On February 24, it became known that 2 members of Polish National Council of television and radio communication (chairman of the council Jan Dvorak, and Krzysztof Luft) received murder threats of anti-Semitic character, after they decided not to extend the licence of an ultra-Catholic television company Trwam, and deny its request to become a part of digital multichannel television system, which in the future will replace the analogue broadcasting in the country .
In 2014, a considerable growth in such incidents was recorded – up to 81 cases. In May 2014, commemorative events were held in Braniewo, dedicated to 30 thousand Soviet soldiers and officers. The event was attended by a delegation from Kaliningrad, along with Governor Nikolai Tsukanov and buses of public activists and school students. The delegation encountered a group of Polish bikers, who threw a rock at a bus with school children and a bottle at an accompanying car. Luckily, no one was hurt. On May 9, civil activist Adam Ezhi Usnanski was attacked carrying the Russian flag on his way to a pro-Russian rally in Warsaw . On May 15, nationalists attacked the leader of the Union of Democratic Leftist Forces, Leszek Miller, in Zari . On June 13, employees of a Community Centre was attacked in the area of Bydgoszcz-Torun (Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodship). 5 attackers with concealed faces assaulted 2 male employees of the Community Centre sparing Katarzyna Jankowska, who then told the police about the attack. The employees were accused of giving shelter to the “blacks”, specifically a Brazilian capoeira instructor. On June 15, nationalists tried to attack an LGBT parade in Warsaw . On August 8, a racial attack was made on a French citizen at a nightclub in Wroclaw. Polish taxi driver, to whom victim turned as he was fleeing, gave him to the attackers . On November 7, an elderly man was attacked in Warsaw, mistaken for a Jew . On November 9, Krakow nationalists attacked several antifascist activists from “End of Stagnation” art group. Antifascists were designing banners for the March of Free Poland .
In January, Polish Defence League (PLO) executed a plan to “protect the honor of Polish women” against Muslims at Polish night clubs. The openly Islamophobic organization claimed its campaign to protect the Polish gene pool is non-violent in character and consists of interventions to warn potential female partners of the dangers of kidnapping and imprisonment in Islamic countries. In addition, on June 6, 2014 in Ostróda, an intoxicated man Peter O. called a citizen of Nigeria “black”, “bamboo” and “monkey”, obscenely insulting the skin colour of the Nigerian.
The number of hate attacks in 2015 increased even more, up to 165 hate crime incidents.
The total number of hate crimes in Poland rose sharply in 2018, when police recorded 1,117 episodes. Of those, 397 cases were accepted for investigation by investigating authorities and 315 went to trial. The main victims of attacks during this period were from Arab countries, in particular students, representatives of Egypt and Saudi Arabia.The main victims of attacks during this period were from Arab countries, in particular students, representatives of Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
In 2019, a year of parliamentary elections, the number of hate crimes decreased markedly. There were 972 offenses, of which 432 were accepted for investigation. Interestingly, the number of court convictions reached a record 597 that year, indicating that old cases that had been delayed in court proceedings were given the go-ahead. This year, the victims of aggression were also people with dark skin, such as citizens of India and Bangladesh, as well as Ukrainians, which was usually explained by ideological differences based on the figure of S. Bandera, who is revered by many Ukrainians as a hero and by Poles as the executioner of Polish citizens in Ukraine.
In 2020, the number of such crimes dropped due to the coronavirus pandemic to 826 episodes, of which 374 were investigated and 266 sentenced. The main victims that year were people of Chinese descent, due to the widespread xenophobic myth at the time that the Chinese were the carriers of the disease.
