Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski on Thursday announced a new drive to tackle the country's communist past, saying former members of the secret police should lose benefits such as pensions.
Kaczynski said that his Law and Justice party planned legislation that would "free Poland of the last traces of communism by removing all the privileges of individuals responsible for the crimes and repression of the totalitarian state."
The draft law would also class the reviled communist-era secret police, or Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa (SB), as a "criminal" organization, he said.
The former SB has been back in the spotlight in recent weeks after revelations about its past links with members of Poland's powerful Roman Catholic Church.
The newly appointed archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, stepped down on Sunday after the media exposed his years of collaboration with the SB, which sought to recruit priests to inform on parishioners and fellow churchmen.
The Wielgus scandal and cases involving other priests have dented the image of the Church, which played a leading role in opposing Poland's four-decade communist regime.
Kaczynski, a conservative Catholic and former anti-communist activist, said it was high time for a crackdown on ex-SB members themselves.
"It is a question not only of condemning those who collaborated with the former secret police, but above all those who made up and ran it," he told journalists.
"Today we have a situation where those who were most guilty don't suffer the consequences at all. On the contrary, they are privileged, thanks to things such as special pensions," he added.
Kaczynski said his party would submit draft legislation "in coming weeks" requiring the publication of the names of former SB staff and barring them from public life.
The draft law would also cut their pensions to the national monthly minimum of around 800 zlotys (US$270). Currently, former SB staff can receive several thousand zlotys per month.
Unlike neighboring Czech Republic, which moved swiftly to punish former regime members, Poland has not cracked down hard in the years since the end of communism in 1989. Nor has it thrown open its secret police archives to the public.
But Kaczynski and his twin brother Lech, who is president of Poland, made casting off the nation's communist past once and for all a major plank of their successful election campaigns last year.
The latest initiative would fine tune a law which aims to expose anyone in public life and a swathe of professions who collaborated with the SB.
That legislation, which is set to come into force in coming months, is expected to affect around 400,000 people.
Elected officials, top civil servants and journalists will be among those required to apply to the National Remembrance Institute (IPN) -- set up in 1998 to prosecute Nazi and communist crimes -- for a certificate saying whether or not they collaborated with the SB.
The IPN, which holds the country's communist-era files, will publish details of affected individuals. People who feel they have been unfairly labeled will be able to turn to the courts.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese