A Polish nationalist activist connected with the opposition Conservatives (PiS) has been indicted for incitement to murder Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and incitement to hatred against Germany.
Robert Bąkiewicz is a former organiser of the annual National Independence Day March and currently heads up a Border Defence Movement (ROG). That is a group of volunteers who have patrolled the border with Germany and publicised alleged attempts by Germany to push back migrants in into Poland.
Bąkiewicz has also in the past led his followers in attempting to protect churches against pro-abortion activists.
Yesterday, prosecutors in Warsaw presented the charges. They relate to a speech Bąkiewicz made in Warsaw last October during an anti-European Union migration policy demonstration organised by the PiS. During it, he accused Tusk of being subservient to EU and German interests.
According to prosecutors the rhetoric used by Bąkiewicz, such as the call to “pull out weeds with the use of napalm” constituted incitement to violence against Tusk, although Tusk was not actually named in the phrase used by the activist.
If Bąkiewicz is convicted of incitement to hatred and murder he could face a prison term of three years.
During his speech, he also reportedly said: “The enemy must be seen off when he’s swaying in the ring beaten until he lies on the boards,” and that people should not “just wait for politicians to act but take up the struggle yourselves”.
As well as being charged with public incitement to commit a crime, Bąkiewicz, has also been indicted for insulting a public official by calling Tusk a “traitor” and “German stooge”.
Finally, he is accused of inciting hatred based on national and ethnic differences because of his remarks regarding Germans and immigrants.
Bąkiewicz denies the charges, saying his words have been deliberately misrepresented as part of a political campaign against him and his supporters.
“Today we are dealing with a political circus, with no justice at all” Bąkiewicz told reporters, adding that “the charges are absurd”.
“The charges brought against me are incitement to murder Donald Tusk. This is an abstraction. This strikes not only at my constitutional rights to freedom of speech.
“According to the prosecutor’s office, I am a man who calls for the murder of Donald Tusk. I don’t think I even mentioned him by name there, but the prosecutor knows better,” he said.
“If we agree to this kind of proceedings against me, then in a moment absolutely no one will have the right to say anything,” he argued.
He also said he could not understand how it was illegal to “expose Tusk to a loss of trust”, how criticising Germany for its role in the Second World War and its alleged practice of pushing migrants back into Poland. He also questioned why revealing statistical data on rapes of women by migrants were incitements to hatred.
Bąkiewicz recalled how Tusk had, in 2021, quoted a poem about using a “rope and a branch” against “those who raise their hand against the nation”. That was a reference to PiS-aligned then-president Andrzej Duda and that the present PM subsequently faced no action from prosecutors.
The activist has in the past been convicted for physically removing a female protester from a church but was pardoned by Duda.
In a separate case prosecutors have charged Bąkiewicz with obstructing the work of border guards on Poland’s western frontier with Germany, including insulting officers.
The Border Defence Movement was accused by the government of illegally attempting to stop migrants and of misrepresenting the situation on that frontier. The government, though, under pressure from public opinion, did reintroduce border checks with Germany in the summer of last year.
The courts have recently rejected prosecutions against border activists who tried to stop border guards on the frontier with Belarus performing their functions and for attempting to help migrants attempting to cross that border illegally.
The Civic Coalition, the main party in Tusk’s centre-left ruling coalition, when in opposition questioned the need for border fences on Poland’s eastern frontier and slammed the last PiS government for what it called inhumane treatment of migrants.
Since its arrival in office, though, the Tusk government has actually increased fortifications on the border with Belarus, suspended the issuing of asylum to migrants on that frontier and reintroduced border checks with Germany.
