Poland's Sejm passes anti-terrorist act; opposition negate

The Sejm has adopted a tough anti-terrrorist act to safeguard the nation against potential threats. "You used to defend thieves, now you're defending terrrorists,"

J. Kaczyński told the opposition. The negative oppostion can only negate, nitpick and backbite since they've got no coherent programme of their own other than PiS-bashing and herding people into the streets. It's no wonder then that the latest CBOS survey shows that PiS enjoy greater support than Petru & PO combined.

I tried to search for the components of the act, and found these, correct me if i'm wrong:


So basically the government can ban all the protests by the opposition under the pretext of terrorism ? It sounds like the martial law from PRL doesn't it ?

We are at war with international terrorism and at times of war tough safegaurds are put in palce by even the most democratic of countries. It's better to be safe than sorry!

Very much so - they've already started raiding the offices of opposition parties and banning the peaceful and civillised Polish pro-democracy rallies is unfortunately a logical next step for them. And that's when the international community will respond.

it is illegal for Polish parties to accept donations or to otherwise be funded by foreing countries - this is what Partia Zmiana and Mateusz Piskorski were doing - Piskorski is personally charged with cooperation with Russian intelligence agencies and taking money for this

More snitchery and calls for foreign intervention, in oterh words TARGOWICA!

And this is a reason to raid an opposition party's office without warning and at dawn? Most democracies would raise the issue in parliament rather than react in the shabby and shameless way that we expect from PiS.


Charged with, not convicted, and the PiS regime (who are behind this) are hardly known for their love of truth or justice.

throughout history, many totalitarian regimes used different pretexts to ban the legitimate opposition protests.. and this seems like just another case.


I have never heard that protests were banned under the pretext of terrorism in France, UK, USA, Spain, Belgium, and these countries were hit harder by terrorism than Poland.

there was enough evidence to justify it - and the prosecutors or ABW probably hoped to find more evidence


no protests were banned - listen to what jon is saying and you will walk barefoot in Polish winter - good luck with that

In your opinion. Others might wonder why they did wht they did, especially since there is insufficient reason to make a dawn raid on the offices of a legally constituted political party.

Imagine that happening in the UK, the US etc. But then again, those countries have better governments and a far smaller history of the political repression that PiS find so attractive.

btw Mateusz Piskorski was in the process of arranging his escape from Poland ABW claims


btw Mateusz Piskorski was in the process of arranging his escape from Poland ABW claims

The borders came down in 2004 and the requirement for exit visas was aboloshed 25+ years ago - nobody has to 'escape' from Poland - however it is understandable that a Polish pro-democracy activist or anyone else at direct risk from PiS and their cohorts may want to be in a safe place - and we can see why given the regime-sponsored attacks on this man.

We know, Gumi, that you have a bit of a history here of unsuccessfully trying to defend PiS actions, however that comment takes the biscuit!


Ditto

Basically yes. Although the whole Europe tends to do that now.

Let's look at one of the elements of the plan, law obliging the pre-paid telephone SIM cards to register them. What will it give? A possibility to trace the phone calls (or, at least, so called meta-data, which may be even worse - they know where you were, whom you were calling, they don't know the topic of the call) and connect them with specific persons, which was impossible up to now. Exactly what the communists were doing to fight with the opposition...

Will it help in any way to fight with terrorists? No. They will use either SIM cards registered for false data, or SIM cards from other countries, where it's not obligatory to register them. Or SIM cards from stolen mobile phones.

But when a normal citizen, who wants to be fully legal and registers his SIM card, does something that the government doesn't like (although it's not truly illegal - for example opens a Facebook profile criticizing the government) - then it will be not a problem to find a way to punish him.


But the other European governments do exactly the same... Not to mention the USA government, doing it already for a long time..

sure - tell it to all the Polish scum that left Poland for UK to escape justice

Don't be silly. Those folks just stepped on a plane (and went through Polish passport control on the way!)


No - as far as I know the USA do not make dawn raids on opposition parties.


This is a particularly bizarre step - anyone who is actually a terrorist will just use a SIM bought and recharged elsewhere or evade the law in some other way.

Even some perfectly honest people will no longer use Polish pay-as-you-go.

great - let them use contract mobiles - you are all a bunch of hysterics

With the new EU-wide cap on roaming charges people will just get a better deal from a country where you can just buy the cards freely without a creepy regime monitoring it - so basically another PiS failure.

Poland had that law back in the 1990s and early 2000s. It was scrapped when the powers that be noticed Mr Donald Duck had several thousand telephone lines.

Według danych z listopada 2013 r., które zebrała międzynarodowa organizacja operatorów sieci telefonii komórkowej GSM Association (GSMA), kartę pre-paid w Europie kupić można bez pokazywana dowodu osobistego m.in. w Portugalii, Irlandii, Szwecji, Finlandii, z kolei w takich krajach jak Hiszpania, Niemcy, Francja czy Włochy jest obowiązek rejestracji przy zakupie kart pre-paid.

translation - according to data from November 2013 .. a pre-paid card had to be registered in countries like Spain, Germany, France and Italy

these countries must really fail

It reminds me of the Turkish government when it blocks Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook, in order to silence the voice of the opposition and disconnect them from the world in an attempt to hide the protests that were occurring on Taksim square.

this is simple dany - opposition must be stifled with all possible means - Poland is now officially a fascist country - if you don't like leave or don't come - and well spread the word - maybe you will thus justify the forces of Light from Russia to stop fascism yet again as they did in the past

Not necessarily, but Jon demonstrated how terrorists can easily use other sources of telecommunication, so this law isn't effective in detecting terrorists, and might be used in the way that Kpc described:

why do you worry - do you live here - if so why don't you learn Polish and read Polish sources - and well as I told you Poland is now officially a fascist country - a truly despicable regime that opresses the masses - it's a matter of time when joint American-Russian forces liberate us only to discover mass-graves of the regime's opponents

so yeah if you don't live here stay away

I am not telling about politics, but about spying normal people telling them bullsh*ts about fighting with terrorism.


Supposedly, this EU law is going to have some limitations (maybe about time), making it impossible using SIM cards from abroad permanently for these low prices.

Actually what would rather happen in such a situation would be people from counties like Germany, where mobile phone services are damn expensive (even now there are cases, where it's cheaper to use a German SIM card in roaming, outside Germany, than locally within Germany - due to these EU roaming regulations) massively buying Polish SIM cards.


Well to know. Do you mean Kaczyński or Tusk? One is "duck", the other is Donald, so it's not so easy to guess... Anyway, in the early 2000's neither Kaczyński nor Tusk were at the top.


It's not totally true, in Germany you also don't have to show your ID to buy a SIM card... Although you have to register it to start using it. You can though just use false data for the registration.


Yes, it's much worse than these registration of pre-paid SIM cards... Just Internet censorship, like in China.... And, supposedly, it's also included in the project.

PO also wanted to introduce such a law - but they gave up after people's protests.

I will probably leave after graduating this year, it's just a shame to witness Poland's transformation to totalitarianism. When I first came here in September 2013, things were great, but now it's deteriorating.


Is that your way of calling me Pro-Russian ?


Your sarcasm isn't contributing to the discussion. I have lived before under the rule of a regime that had the exact same laws that PIS just passed, needless to say, they used all these laws to crush the opposition, and monitor and intimidate/arrest anyone who opposes them.

If you are so clueless about what's going on here, better leave.

my sarcasm is very much justified - learn Polish and talk to Polish people more - you will learn more about how totalitarian Poland has become and how opressive it is - leave for UK - UK is a fortress of democracy and free speech that will never fall - they will welcome you with open arms there - they are the most open society in the world - they like Polish workers so much that they even consider leaving the EU

I am Polish :)


This is still in process.. the laws that are being passed indicate that Poland is heading this way, we shall see :)


Meddling with the Constitutional Tribunal work, passing laws that can be used to silence opposition, taking control of state media..
If you look at history, these are all alarming signs that suggest a shift towards totalitarianism

by what standard - either you are hysterical or clueless - I don't think you speak passable Polish to be honest

anti-terrorist act? Could this be start of Poland`s abandoning NATO and EU?