On February 27, Polish police detained reporter Mykhailo Tkach and cameraman Yaroslav Bondarenko, from the independent news website Ukrainska Pravda, near the eastern Polish city of Łuków, while they were reporting on agricultural trade between Poland and its eastern neighbors Russia and Belarus, according to news reports andUkrainska Pravda Chief Editor Sevgil Musaieva, who spoke to CPJ.
Separately, on March 7, Polish law enforcement officers detained editor Yuriy Konkevych and camera operator Oleksandr Pilyuk, from the Ukrainian news agency Rayon.in.ua, while they were reporting on freight traffic on the Polish-Russian border and deported them to Ukraine on March 9, according to the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine and multiple news reports.
“CPJ is concerned by Poland’s detention, in the span of two weeks, of four Ukrainian journalists who were investigating the country’s trade with Russia,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s program coordinator for Europe and Central Asia. “Journalists should be able to report on matters of public interest without fear of detention or deportation.”
Polish farmers have been blocking border crossings with Ukraine, as they say cheap Ukrainian grain is flooding their market since customs duties were waived after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Tkach and Bondarenko showed their journalistic credentials to the police officers who had approached their car, those sources said. “They began grabbing our cameras and looking around,” Tkach told his outlet, adding that around 10 police officers searched their car and seized “all of the phones, documents, and memory cards from the cameras.”
Police officers then took Tkach and Bondarenko to the police commandant’s office in Łuków and, along with agents with the Polish special services, questioned the journalists about their sources, he said.
Tkach and Bondarenko were released after the Ukrainian ambassador to Poland intervened, having been kept at the office for over four hours, the Ukrainska Pravda report said. Their property was returned but some footage had been deleted from their memory cards, and the battery charger was damaged, it said.
The police of Lublin province, where Łuków is located, said on X, formerly Twitter, that they took action to “establish” the journalists’ identities and then allowed them to leave the station.
The Ukrainian press freedom group Institute of Mass Information (IMI) quoted Poland’s Lublin provincepolice as denying that they seized phones and other personal belongings from the journalists, saying that they only “inspected” the contents of the journalists’ car after receiving a report that two men were using a drone and cameras near the railway track.
“They have cameras everywhere in the commandant’s office, and if they look at a video or are interested in it, they will see everything,” Tkach told IMI.
Tkach, an investigative reporter, has previously been surveilled and harassed in connection with his work. On March 16, police in the western city of Uzhhorod came to Tkach’s hotel at 2:40 a.m. following a complaint from a local MP, the subject of a recent Ukrainska Pravda investigation, who claimed that he had been followed, Tkach reported on Facebook.
In the second incident, around five or six police officers detained Konkevych and Pilyuk in the Polish town of Braniewo, searched their car, and seized the journalists’ phones, memory cards, microphones, camera, and laptop, Rayon.in.ua said, adding that the police did not inform the consul or allow the reporters to call Ukraine.
Braniewo is about 70 kilometers (43 miles) southwest of Kaliningard, a Baltic Sea port that became part of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, although it is geographically separate from Russia and borders Poland and Lithuania.
The journalists were detained for “spending too much time photographing critical infrastructure” in the area, “namely Russian liquefied gas railcars,” the report said.
Konkevych told IMI that “various Polish services” interrogated him and Pilyuk on March 7 and March 8, before the Polish Internal Security Service ordered their deportation as “persons who threaten the national security of Poland,” without providing further details. Their personal belongings were returned, but not their professional equipment, he said.
Rayon.in.au has started the process of appealing the deportation, which prohibits the journalists from visiting for five years the 27 European Schengen area countries where border controls have been abolished, and demanded the return of their equipment, its director Ihor Denisevich said in a statement.
CPJ’s text messages to Rayon.in.ua and email to Polish police requesting comment on the journalists’ arrests did not receive any replies.
]]>“We are deeply disappointed that the long judicial process involving the suspects in journalist Jarosław Ziętara’s murder has not resulted in a mastermind being convicted for his killing,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Now, more than 30 years later and with the two alleged hitmen awaiting an appeals court decision after their acquittal in 2022, there seems to be little chance that Polish authorities will end impunity in Ziętara’s case. Polish authorities should continue to work toward complete justice by pursuing the prosecution of all who orchestrated his murder.”
Ziętara disappeared on September 1, 1992, in Poznań, western Poland. Prior to his disappearance, he had published investigative articles about alleged irregularities and corruption connected to the privatization of state-owned companies, as well as reports about the alleged role of the political elite and the secret services in these scandals. He also covered human trafficking and smuggling along the German-Polish and Belarusian-Polish borders.
After years of delays in investigating his disappearance and suspected death and a campaign by the journalist’s family and colleagues for authorities to take action, prosecutors in 2011 reopened the investigation and determined that Ziętara had likely been killed in connection with his reporting on alleged corruption.
Gawronik’s trial on charges of inciting Ziętara’s murder began in 2016. Prosecutors believed that the businessman, who in the early 1990s was an active entrepreneur in Poznań, instigated Ziętara’s murder to prevent the journalist from reporting on his business activities.
On January 19, 2024, the Court of Appeal in Poznań issued a final judgment upholding the initial verdict acquitting Gawronik due to a lack of evidence. Gawronik pleaded not guilty and denied the charges all through the process.
The two of the alleged hitmen were acquitted in October 2022, which the prosecution appealed.
The whereabouts of Ziętara’s body remain unknown.
In January 2024, CPJ’s email to the prosecutor’s office in Poznań did not receive any replies.
]]>During a climate protest in Warsaw on Friday, July 14, as police attempted to subdue and detain a protester, a group of six or seven officers forcibly removed from the scene freelance photojournalist Maciej Piasecki, who was on assignment for privately owned news website OKO.press, preventing him from documenting events, according Piasecki, who spoke with CPJ via messaging app, his employer, and other media reports.
The incident, at around 2 p.m., was captured in a video published by OKO.press and corroborated by Piasecki and those reports, which said it occurred during a demonstration in which activists glued their hands to the pavement outside the Ministry of Climate and Environment.
Police removed protesters from the scene by violently apprehending them, according to Piasecki and OKO.press. As Piasecki covered these events live on his TikTok channel, officers shouted to each other instructions to remove him from the scene as well, as seen in video reviewed by CPJ.
Piasecki can be heard saying that he wants to continue covering the events, according to an OKO.press transcript. Police then pushed him aside, and the video shows the police officer grabbing his neck from behind and dragging him toward the ground. Piasecki told CPJ and local media that he did not resist and was not injured, but the officer broke his own leg as they fell to the ground.
A group of seven or eight police then pressed Piasecki to the ground, allegedly twisting his hands, before handcuffing him, confiscating his camera, and taking him to a police station where he was detained for six hours, searched, and questioned in the presence of his lawyer, according to Piasecki and those reports.
“Polish authorities should conduct a swift and transparent investigation into the detention and forcible removal of freelance photojournalist Maciej Piasecki from a recent climate protest and ensure that members of the press can report on events of public interest without police interference,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Journalists deserve police officers’ protection during protests. Unless authorities have something to hide, they must ensure that reporters can cover issues of public interest without fear of police interference.”
The police threatened to press charges against Piasecki for allegedly ignoring their orders and violating the bodily integrity of police officers, but released him without charge, according to OKO.press and Piasecki. He told CPJ and local media that police returned his camera on July 17, and when he collected his equipment, police confirmed to him that no charges would be brought against him.
“The police obstructed my work since the beginning of the protest, despite… the fact that I was wearing my press ID visibly on a lanyard on my neck,” Piasecki told CPJ.
The protesters were rallying against the forced removal the previous day of fellow demonstrators who had maintained a blockade against intensive logging in Poland’s Carpathian Mountains.
“When police earlier asked me to show my credentials, I showed them my card,” Piasecki said, adding that some officers attempted to block his camera’s field of vision as the protesters were met with force. He insists that other than stating his intention to carry on working, he did not resist the officers in any way.
In an email to CPJ, Warsaw Metropolitan Police spokesperson Sylvester Marczak said that authorities would conduct an investigation into the reporter’s detention “to clarify all circumstances.”
]]>The hearing started unsurprisingly enough. Chaim Gelfand, the NSO Group lawyer, laid out the company line that Pegasus is designed for use against terrorists and other criminals. He promised that the company controlled its sales, developed human rights and whistleblowing policies, and took action against those governments that abused it. He wanted to “dispel certain rumors and misconceptions” about the technology that have circulated in “the press and public debate.” He made his case.
Then, surely from NSO Group’s perspective, it went downhill. MEP after MEP asked specific questions of NSO Group. For instance: if Pegasus is sold only to counter terrorism or serious crime, how did it come to be used in EU member states? How did it come to be used to eavesdrop on staffers at the European Commission, another public allegation? Can NSO provide examples of when it terminated contracts because a client misused Pegasus? Can NSO clarify what data it has on its clients’ uses of Pegasus? How does NSO Group know when the technology is “abused”? More personally: How come you spied on me?
MEPs were angry. Increasingly their questions became more intense, more personal, more laced with moral and legal outrage. And this tenor only deepened over the course of the hearing, as the NSO lawyer stumbled through his points and regularly resorted to the line that he could not speak to specific examples, cases or governments. Few, if any, seemed persuaded by the NSO Group claim that it has no insight into the day-to-day use of the spyware by the “end-user”. To the contrary, the PEGA hearing ended with one thing clear: NSO Group faces not only anger but the reality of an energized set of legislators.
More than a year after release of the Pegasus Project, the global reporting investigation that disclosed massive pools of potential targets for Pegasus surveillance, the momentum for action against spyware like Pegasus is gathering steam.
In 2019, in my capacity as a U.N. Special Rapporteur, I issued a report to the United Nations Human Rights Council that surveyed the landscape of the private surveillance industry and the vast human rights abuses it facilitates, calling for a moratorium on the sale, transfer and use of such spyware. At the time, few picked up the call. But today, with extensive reporting of the use of spyware tools against journalists, opposition politicians, human rights defenders, the families of such persons, and others, the tide seems to be turning against Pegasus and spyware of its ilk.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, several U.N. special rapporteurs, the leaders of major human rights organizations, and at least one state, Costa Rica, have joined the call for a moratorium. The Supreme Court of India is pursuing serious questions about the government’s use of Pegasus. The United States Department of Commerce placed NSO Group and another Israeli spyware firm on its list of restricted entities, forbidding the U.S. government from doing any business with them. Apple and Facebook’s parent company Meta have sued NSO Group for using their infrastructure to hack into individual phones.
All of these steps suggest not only momentum but the elements of a global process to constrain the industry. They need to be transformed into a long-term strategy to deal with the threats posed to human rights by intrusive, mercenary spyware. State-by-state responses, or high-profile corporate litigation, will generate pain for specific companies and begin to set out the normative standards that should apply to surveillance technologies. But in order to curb the industry as a whole, a global approach will be necessary.
In principle, spyware with the characteristics of Pegasus – the capability to access one’s entire device and data connected to it, without discrimination, and without constraint – already violates basic standards of necessity and proportionality under international human rights law. On that ground alone, it’s time to begin speaking of not merely a moratorium but a ban of such intrusive technology, whether provided by private or public actors. No government should have such a tool, and no private company should be able to sell such a tool to governments or others.
In the land of reality, however, a ban will not take place immediately. Even if a coalition of human rights-friendly governments could get such negotiations toward a ban off the ground, it will take time.
Here is where bodies like the European Parliament and its PEGA Committee – and governments and parliamentarians around the world – can make an immediate difference. They should start to discuss a permanent ban while also entertaining other interim approaches: stricter global export controls to limit the spread of spyware technology; commitments by governments to ensure that their domestic law enables victims of spyware to bring suits against perpetrators, whether domestic or foreign; and broad agreement by third-party companies, such as device manufacturers, social media companies, security entities and others, to develop a process for notification of spyware breaches especially to users and to one another.
Some of this would be hard to accomplish. It’s not as if the present moment, dominated as it is by tensions like Russian aggression against Ukraine, is conducive to international negotiations. Some steps could be achieved by governments that should be concerned about the spread of such technologies, already demonstrated by U.S. and European outrage. Either way, governments and activists can begin to lay the groundwork, defining the key terms, highlighting the fundamental illegality of spyware like Pegasus, taking steps in domestic law to ensure strict controls on export and use.
There is precedent for such action in the global movement to ban landmines in the 1990s, which started with little hope of achieving a ban, focused instead on near-term controls. Ultimately human rights activists and like-minded governments were able to hammer out the Ottawa Convention to ban and destroy anti-personnel landmines in 1997. It is, at least, a process that activists and governments today could emulate and modify.
Human rights organizations and journalists have done the work to disclose the existence of a major threat to freedom of expression, privacy, and space for public participation. It is now the duty of governments to do something about it.
On Thursday, May 26, law enforcement officers in the western Belarusian village of Krivichy detained Aliaksandr Lyubyanchuk, a former journalist with independent Poland-based online television station Belsat, and took him to a pre-trial detention center in Minsk, according to a Telegram post by Belarusian human rights group Viasna, and local advocacy and trade group Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ). (Both Viasna and BAJ are banned in Belarus but continue to operate unofficially.) Lyubyanchuck is detained as part of a criminal investigation, BAJ said, but Belarusian authorities have not yet disclosed any charges.
Lyubanchuk left Belsat last year and no longer works in journalism, BAJ deputy director Barys Haretski told CPJ via email. He believes that Lyubanchuk’s recent arrest was in retaliation for his previous reporting for Belsat.
Separately, Belarusian authorities charged exiled journalists Stsypan Putsila and Yan Rudzik, the co-founder and a former administrator of the popular Telegram channel NEXTA-Live respectively, with running a terrorist group, according to news reports. The charges are related to their work on the channel, which the Belarus Supreme Court declared a terrorist organization in April, reports said. CPJ was unable to determine the date of the charges, though they were reported on May 20.
If convicted, the two could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison, according to the Belarusian criminal code.
“Belarusian authorities must release Aliaksandr Lyubyanchuk immediately and drop the ludicrous charges against Stsypan Putsila and Yan Rudzik,” said CPJ Executive Director Robert Mahoney in New York. “Journalism is not terrorism and efforts to erode the country’s independent media by going after individual journalists merely highlights the government’s inability to withstand any critical coverage.”
Belarus’s Investigative Committee said in a statement to state-owned news site BelTA that Putsila and Rudzik were charged because, since 2020, they had “used their information resources to destabilize the situation on the territory of Belarus and radicalize the so-called protests.” Describing them as terrorists, the committee alleged the two had “repeatedly called for inciting social enmity and discord, blocking roads and coordinating street riots, committing terrorist acts on railroads and sabotage at enterprises that could lead to man-made disasters.”
Rudzik told CPJ via messaging app that he had not been officially notified of the charge by Belarusian authorities.
Rudzik said he left NEXTA-Live to become chief editor of the Belarus of the Brain Telegram channel following the May 2021 arrest of former editor Raman Pratasevich, who was detained after Belarusian authorities diverted his Lithuania-bound commercial flight to the Belarussian capital of Minsk. (Pratasevich was also a co-founder of NEXTA, which owns NEXTA-Live; both outlets have extensively covered protests against Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, as CPJ documented.)
Rudzik recently left Belarus of the Brain and has since founded another Telegram channel, Post-Rudzik, he posted on the channel on May 23. In the post he called the terrorism charge against him the “cherry on the cake” in terms of authorities’ targeting him for his journalism and said he was now based in Poland.
CPJ wrote to Putsila via social media but did not receive a reply. He is also based in Poland, according to news reports, which said Polish authorities refused to extradite the journalist earlier this year over multiple additional charges he faced in Belarus.
Separately, on May 20, the Leninski District Court in the western city of Hrodna declared the website and social media pages of Mediazona-Belarus, the Belarus-focused news site of independent Russian outlet Mediazona as extremist, according to the news site.
“Despite the fact that all the members of our small editorial board are in exile, we continue to do quality journalism, we report on the situation in Belarus and we cover the war in Ukraine. We will continue even now, despite the fact that the authorities in our country want us to be afraid and give up our work,” Mediazona.Belarus said in a statement on May 25.
Two days earlier, on May 18, a court in the western city of Baranavichy declared all “information products” by the Telegram channel Economy of Belarus, which publishes economic news and analysis, as “extremist materials,” according to news reports.
Anyone convicted of producing, storing, or spreading extremist materials can be fined up to 960 rubles (US$290) or detained for up to 15 days, according to the administrative code of Belarus.
CPJ contacted both Mediazona.Belarus and Economy of Belarus via messaging app but did not receive replies. CPJ also did not receive responses to emails to the Belarusian Investigative Committee and Leninski and Baranavichy district courts.
CPJ called the Ministry of Interior’s press service for comment, but no one answered.
]]>“It’s like a rotating menu in a restaurant,” she told CPJ of the group’s donations to match the quickly evolving needs of Ukrainian journalists. Since Russia’s invasion of on February 24, the foundation has been part of efforts to send bullet-proof vests, first aid kits, technical gear, and more to Ukrainian journalists so they can continue to tell the story of the war.
The Wyborcza Foundation is one of several Polish initiatives to help the Ukrainian press. In interviews with CPJ, Polish journalists said they feel a special responsibility to their Ukrainian counterparts, mirroring Polish generosity toward Ukrainians since the outset of the war. Poland, which has deep, if complicated ties with Ukraine and a historic mistrust of Russia, has taken in more than three million Ukrainian refugees, according to the United Nations. However, many Ukrainian journalists, CPJ has learned, have chosen to remain in the country out of a sense of professional and national duty.
“Very quickly, the basic needs for journalists working in small towns and regions in southern and eastern Ukraine became apparent,” said Ostep Protsyk, co-founder of Lviv Media Forum, a regional media conference helping to facilitate aid, including from Poland, to Ukrainian journalists. Some journalists, he noted, have been displaced internally, “arriving to western Ukraine with no money or personal belongings.”
Ukrainian journalists who have fled to Poland often rely on informal networks, indicative of the close ties between the reporting communities in the countries. Journalist Halina Khalymonyk left her home in the southwestern city of Bilyaivka, located between Odesa and Moldova’s breakaway region of Trans-Dniester, in March. The editor-in-chief of local newspaper Bilyaivka.city, Khalymonyk said that it had become impossible to put out a print edition after her typesetter enlisted in the Ukrainian army. That, plus the fact that Bilyaivka was growing increasingly dangerous, prompted her decision to flee.
“This is why I left,” said Khalymonyk in an email, referring to an attached photograph of her daughter hiding in their basement in Bilyaivka. “No child should experience what my [child] went through in a few weeks — sitting in a cold basement, fear of death, sleeping in a bomb shelter.”
Her friend Darek Kortko, a reporter at Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, helped her find an apartment in Katowice, in southern Poland. There, Khalymonyk has continued to publish news about how the war is affecting Bilyaivka on Bilyaivka.city, made possible with more reliable internet access, and has also began writing weekly articles for Gazeta Wyborcza about Ukrainian refugees’ experiences in Poland.
In addition to the informal networks, organized efforts have sprung up to help those who have fled. Fundacja Reporterów (Reporters Foundation), a Polish investigative journalism organization, opened a hotline on February 26 to cater to Ukrainian colleagues in need of logistical help getting out of the country. The group also created a database of accommodations around Poland for journalists and other civil society members.
Sitting in the sparsely decorated Warsaw offices of Fundacja Reporterów, the organization’s co-founder and president, Wojciech Ciesla, showed CPJ the Slack platform where colleagues from media outlets like Gazeta Wyborcza and media trade groups such as Press Club Polska share housing opportunities for Ukrainian refugee journalists.
In the next room, the sofa bed was still made from the previous evening when the foundation hosted a Ukrainian journalist and her family. They had left a few hours prior, setting off to stay with an acquaintance, said Ciesla. A few bags of donated clothing and toys lined the floor, just in case the next family needed anything.
Around the corner from Fundacja Reporterów is a registration center for newly arrived Ukrainian refugees. The war, Ciesla emphasized, is an inescapable reality in Poland.
While Ciesla has been heartened to see the outpouring of help for Ukrainians — journalists and other civilians alike — he said that Polish humanitarian efforts are driven by a deeper existentialist concern about the Kremlin’s reach. There’s a Polish saying, Cielsa said, “If you live in Poland, you never smile at the circus” — meaning that the bear, Russia, could lunge toward you at any moment.
Cognizant of the need to address the growing population of Ukrainians within Poland, some of the country’s radio and television outlets have begun running Ukrainian-language programs with brief news bulletins and information about resources available to refugees.
And in at least one case, refugees started their own outlet. UA24.tv, a Ukrainian-language online television channel based in Warsaw, has provided information for Ukrainians adapting to life in Poland since its launch in mid-April.
The channel’s origins predate the war; Sebastian Mikołajczak, a producer in Poland’s entertainment sector, had long been trying to convince his colleague, Ukrainian entertainment producer Igor Tarnopolski, to create a channel for the Ukrainian diaspora in Poland.
On the eve of the Russian invasion, Mikołajczak floated the idea again to Tarnopolski, trying to persuade him to leave Ukraine for his safety. Several days later, Tarnopolski fled to Poland with his family and the project gained steam. (As a father of three, Tarnopolski was exempt from Ukraine’s rule prohibiting men ages 18 to 60 from leaving the country.)
UA24.tv is funded by Polish state-controlled businesses, but Tarnopolski said that he is keen to find a longer-term funding solution that will allow the channel to maintain editorial independence. In an interview with CPJ before the launch, he said the programming will be aimed at helping Ukrainians adapt to their new lives in Poland, but also provide a respite from the war with entertainment.
“It’s essential that we don’t forget about the war,” he said. “But it’s also of the utmost importance that we don’t forget about our life before and imagine what it will be like after.”
]]>“We are concerned by Poland’s indictment of Spanish freelance reporter Pablo González on charges of spying for Russia,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Polish authorities must guarantee that González has access to proper legal representation and a fair and transparent legal procedure, and ensure he is not sanctioned for his journalistic activities. Reporting is not a crime.”
CPJ emailed the Polish Internal Security Agency for comment on the case, and received a statement, which detailed that on February 28, González was arrested in the southeastern Polish town of Przemyśl, not in Rzeszów as CPJ and others initially reported. The journalist was charged under Article 30, paragraph 1, of the Polish Criminal Code for “participation in the activities of a foreign intelligence service,” which carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years. González is a Spanish citizen of Russian descent, according to the statement.
González’s lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, told CPJ via messaging app that the reporter has been questioned without the presence of a lawyer and has not had contact with anyone from abroad during the last four days. “Until now, neither his family or I have been able to speak with him and we are waiting for the Spanish consulate to arrange a permit for me to visit him in prison,” Boye said.
]]>In the early hours of Monday, February 28, agents with Poland’s Internal Security Agency, the country’s domestic intelligence agency, arrested González in the southeastern Polish town of Przemyśl, where he had been covering Ukrainian refugee movements, according to multiple reports by the Spanish newspaper Público, where González is a regular contributor, and his lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview.
Boye told CPJ that the Polish prosecutor’s office confirmed the arrest and said González was being interrogated, but did not provide any further information concerning his status or the reason for his arrest.
“Polish authorities must immediately release Spanish freelance reporter Pablo González and allow him to report freely,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Authorities should ensure that reporters can cover refugee movements and other vital stories of public interest without fear of prosecution, detention, or harassment.”
González, a freelance reporter who specializes in covering the former Soviet bloc, last contacted Público on Sunday night, when he filed a report on refugees in Poland and told his editor that he was going to rest, according to those reports by the newspaper.
Previously, on February 6, agents with the Ukrainian Security Service detained Gónzalez for several hours in Kyiv and accused him of reporting from military-controlled areas in the Donbas region without proper accreditation, according to those Público reports, which said that Gónzalez denied having reported from restricted zones and was released without charge.
Público reported that Ukrainian authorities accused Gónzalez of being “pro-Russian” and advised him to leave Ukraine within three days.
Following his interrogation in Kyiv, agents with Spain’s National Intelligence Center visited Gónzalez’s friends and family members in Spain and asked about his life and career, according to Público.
CPJ emailed the Ukraine Security Service, Polish Internal Security Agency, and Spanish National Intelligence Center for comment, but did not immediately receive any replies.
[Editor’s Note: The second paragraph was updated to reflect new information that González was arrested in Przemyśl, not in Rzeszów as earlier reports stated, according to a Polish Internal Security Agency statement.]
]]>“When Poland attacks press freedom, it makes a mockery of European Union values,” said Tom Gibson, CPJ’s European Union representative. “The EU General Affairs Council should issue a clear message that Polish authorities are failing to respect press freedom, and should call for concrete reforms.”
On February 22, the General Affairs Council is scheduled to meet as part of Article 7 of the Treaty of the European Union, which allows for infringement procedures against EU member states that do not respect the rule of law. Even though the EU launched Article 7 procedures against Poland in 2017 in response to the country’s controversial judicial reforms, Polish authorities have consistently rejected EU recommendations and rulings from the European Court of Justice, the EU’s highest court.
CPJ has documented how Polish authorities have turned the country’s public service media into an effective propaganda mouthpiece for the ruling Law and Justice party, and the 2020 acquisition of Polska Press by state-owned fuel giant PKN Orlen led to critical journalists being pushed out of independent news outlets. Legal threats and smear campaigns are a daily menace to outspoken journalists, and journalists covering the migration crisis on the Belarusian border have been detained and harassed. Journalists’ families have also recently received death threats.
]]>On January 20, several police stations in different cities throughout Poland called Czuchnowski’s son Mateusz Czuchnowski, saying they had received bomb threats from his phone number; later that day, he also received a call from an automated voice saying, “we will kill you because you are betraying the motherland,” according to news reports and Wojciech Czuchnowski, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview, saying he believed his son’s phone number had been spoofed.
Separately, on January 31, Lis’ daughter Pola Lis also received a call with an automated voice that threatened to kill her for “betraying the motherland,” according to news reports and Tomasz Lis, who communicated with CPJ via email.
Wojciech Czuchnowski, a reporter at the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, and Tomasz Lis, editor-in-chief of the Newsweek Polska weekly, both told CPJ that they believed their children had been targeted in response to their work.
“Polish authorities should take the death threats and harassment of journalists Wojciech Czuchnowski and Tomasz Lis’ children seriously, and hold the perpetrators to account,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Journalists in Poland who critically cover the government should be able to report freely, and authorities must ensure that they can continue their work without fear or intimidation.”
Czuchnowski’s son works as a cinematographer, and Lis’ daughter is a columnist who covers sports, the journalists said. Czuchnowski has recently covered the alleged use of Pegasus surveillance spyware against opposition politicians in Poland, and Lis frequently publishes news coverage critical of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party. In recent weeks, several opposition politicians and civil society activists critical of the government have also been targeted by similar threats and harassment via phone.
“My understanding is that I am targeted,” Tomasz Lis told CPJ.
Both journalists told CPJ that they reported the threats to the police. CPJ emailed the Polish Ministry of the Interior, which oversees the police, but did not immediately receive any reply.
]]>