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On 21 February, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination published recommendations for Poland. It is suggested, for instance, that Poland should include racist motivation in the Criminal Code as an incriminating factor to be taken into account by a court in determining guilt and punishment. The CERD also recommends to continue work for the Roma community and bolster anti-Semitism initiatives in Poland.

M. K. was detained for 134 days due to an error of the court. Currently, he is seeking the payment of PLN 300,000 as compensation for moral loss. The first hearing in the M.K. case was held in the Circuit Court in Katowice.

Last week the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination considered the Polish government’s report on actions aimed at fighting racial discrimination. The UN Committee’s members probed the Polish government about the efficiency of proceedings in hate crimes, multi-layered Roma discrimination and stadium racism.

On 5 February the Committee for Justice and Human Rights and the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Polish Sejm unanimously appointed the permanent subcommittee for the enforcement of European Court of Human Rights judgments.

District Court in Bydgoszcz today acquitted W.K., an employee accused of defaming his former employer who called the latter’s company a “Polish work camp”. The court held that the expression used by the defendant was his opinion which could not be prosecuted under article 212 of the Criminal Code. The court said that only statements about facts could be defamatory.

Marcin K. has filed a lawsuit against Zbigniew R., the Kołobrzeg-Koszalin Diocese and St. Adalbert Roman Catholic Parish. The claimant requests an apology in the national edition of the Gazeta Wyborcza daily newspaper and Newsweek magazine and PLN 200,000 as compensation for moral damages caused by a priest’s sex abuse.

The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) has published a report on ‘Access to data protection remedies in the EU Member States’. The report, which is based on social fieldwork research, shows the most important problems concerning the access to redress mechanisms in cases of data protection violations.

It has been more than six months since the US mass surveillance programme PRISM was reported in the press and we are yet to learn all the details regarding collaboration between Polish authorities and the US National Security Agency. The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights and the Panoptykon Foundation have not yet received answers to all the questions submitted to public bodies.

The European Court of Human Rights will look into the case of two men beaten by police officers during interrogation. The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights prepared an application against Poland, alleging a violation of the prohibition of torture.