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Far right threatens to upstage Polish independence centenary
Polish leaders march with far right on Independence Day
(about 4 hours later)
Poles mark a century of independence on Sunday amid tensions in the isolated and deeply polarised country over the role of far-right groups in the main parade.
Poland’s president, prime minister and other leaders have led an Independence Day march that included members of nationalist organisations, the first time Polish state officials have marched with the far-right groups.
Chaos engulfed plans for the state military parade in Warsaw days ahead of the centenary, as far-right groups vowed to use the same route and timing for their annual independence day march.
Two hundred thousand people marched in Warsaw to mark the 100th anniversary of Poland’s rebirth as an independent state at the end of the first world war, according to an initial police estimate.
Last year’s march drew global outrage when some participants displayed racist and anti-immigrant banners and slogans. Its organisers include the National Radical Camp (ONR), a marginal group with roots in an antisemitic, pre-second world war movement.
Over the past decade, nationalist organisations have held Independence Day marches on 11 November that have included racist slogans, flares and in some years, acts of aggression.
In a bid to avoid a similar debacle on the centenary, the rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) government and allied President Andrzej Duda on Wednesday announced the state military parade, insisting it had legal priority.
Officials sought to hold a single, government-led march for Sunday’s centennial ceremonies, but negotiations broke down over requests for the groups to leave their banners at home. An agreement on a joint march was reached in recent days.
But the far-right groups refused to back down after a court overruled a separate ban imposed by the Warsaw mayor citing the risk of violence and hate speech.
The president, Andrzej Duda, the prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, and the leader of the conservative ruling party, Jarosław Kaczyński, marched in a group led by soldiers with a large flag bearing the words “For you Poland.”
The PiS government spent Friday in a tug of war over the scheduling of the two events. The sides confirmed late on Friday that they would coincide.
Walking a small distance behind them were the nationalists, many of them burning flares, creating flashes of red light and smoke. Many carried national flags, but a handful of other emblems were observed.
Drawing a “clear red line between patriotic behaviour and nationalistic or chauvinistic [behaviour], or neo-Nazis”, the PiS prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has vowed to act “decisively” against the public display of fascist symbols or slogans, which are illegal in Poland.
Those included the flag of the National Radical Camp, a far-right group that was one of the main march organisers. The camp’s flag has a falanga, a far-right symbol dating from the 1930s of a stylised hand with a sword.
The US, Canadian and Ukrainian embassies issued warnings about the possibility of violence in connection with the march, while many Poles have expressed dismay.
There were also a few flags of Forza Nuova, an Italian group whose leader, Roberto Fiore, describes himself as fascist.
“When the Polish government has to negotiate with far-right groups on the centenary it shows the weakness of the state,” Wojciech, a 67-year-old Warsaw taxi driver who declined to provide his surname, said. “It’s very sad and disappointing.”
As the Polish president spoke at the start of the march, he was at times obscured by the heavy smoke from the flares.
Underscoring Poland’s growing isolation in the European Union since the PiS took office in 2015, no senior delegations from fellow EU states are due to attend the centenary, which coincides with the armistice centenary.
Throughout the day, solemn ceremonies and masses were held in cities and small towns to commemorate the nation’s regained statehood after 123 years of foreign rule.
The government has put Poland on a collision course with the EU by introducing a string of controversial judicial reforms that Brussels has warned pose a threat to judicial independence, the rule of law and ultimately to democracy.
The EU president, Donald Tusk, a former liberal Polish prime minister, was the bloc’s only senior representative in Warsaw on Sunday and his visit comes amid speculation that he may return to run for president in 2020.
“Forgive us Poland ... we love you,” Tusk said, urging national unity early on Sunday, remarking that Poles “sometimes argue too much” about their country as he laid flowers at the statue of the independence leader Marshal Józef Piłsudski in Warsaw.
Speaking on Saturday, Tusk likened the PiS to “contemporary Bolsheviks” who must be “defeated”.
He also repeated a warning that the PiS could unwittingly unleash a “Polexit” from the EU despite its strong popularity among Poles and the many assurances of the PiS leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, that his party has no such designs.
Widely regarded as Poland’s de facto powerbroker, Kaczyński has played a key role behind the scenes in shaping domestic and foreign policy. He and Tusk are arch-rivals.
Poles will pause nationwide at the stroke of noon on Sunday to sing the national anthem. It will be a rare show of unity in the EU and Nato country of 38 million people that has become increasingly polarised under the PiS.
While robust economic growth, along with the government’s generous social welfare measures and conservative stance, have garnered it support mainly in rural areas, judicial reforms have sparked outrage among urban centrists and liberals.
But Norman Davies, an Oxford historian and a renowned authority on Poland, insists that despite the recent turmoil “Poles have never had it so good”.
Before November 1918, Poland did not exist at all for 123 years, carved up between the Prussian, Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires.
“From all those countries [that regained independence in 1918], Poland has been the most successful ... not only in economic terms but also in terms of political stability, constitutional consensus and geopolitical security” within Nato, Davies said, speaking at a recent security conference in Warsaw.
