Latest

Danuta Przywara, chief of the board of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights received yesterday the Jerzy Zimowski Prize. Danuta Przywara is a sociologist, working for the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights from its very beginning, initially, as a memeber of the Founders’ Committee, subsequently, as a Secretary of the Board, Deputy Chair of the Board, and from 2008 as a Chair of the Board.

The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights has written an official letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs requesting the Ministry to initiate a diplomatic intervention concerning the arrest of a human rights defender in Bangladesh, Adilur Rahman Khan.

Human Rights Club of Azerbaijan and the Polish Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights on 10 August 2013 present the legal opinion on presidential elections in Azerbaijan. The opinion has been prepared by distinguished constitutional law scholar Professor Wojciech Sadurski.

The Warsaw’s Court of Appeal has just ruled in the case of Wiesław Rutkowski. Mr Rutkowski, who launched the proceedings in September 2012, is a former police officer seeking to be compensated by the State Treasury for his moral and financial losses sustained during his undoubtedly unjust pre-trial detention. The Court of Appeal awarded the ex-officer PLN 59,500 as compensation for moral loss. The court’s judgment is final.

Two inmates of the Barczewo prison have contacted the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights asking us to intervene. In their letters they warned against an outbreak of salmonellosis in their prison.

4 August is the second anniversary of the arrest of Ales Belyatsky, a Belarusian political prisoner, human rights defender and head of the Human Rights Centre “Vesna”. In many countries this date marks the day of solidarity with the civil society of Belarus and the country’s human rights movement.

The HFHR has asked the Minister of Health, Bartosz Arłukowicz, to look into the practices of patient pain management by Polish doctors.The recently published press articles (including, the publications in Duży Format and Polityka weekly magazines) show that doctors very rarely and, if so, reluctantly, prescribe potent painkilling drugs to non-terminal patients.

Recently uncovered information about the US “PRISM” programme revealed that the scheme may also have targeted Polish nationals. The HFHR has expressed its concern over these disturbing reports and has sent written statements to the Sejm committees, the Minister of Administration and Digitisation, and the Minister of Interior, asking about what action has been taken to protect the privacy of Polish citizens on the Internet.

The charges were brought in the aftermath of a controversy surrounding the article “ABC milionera” (Millionaire’s ABC) published in “Tygodnik” in September 2009. Authors of the article, Paweł Pełka, Rafał Gratkowski and the paper’s editor-in-chief Beata Zalot, quoted a letter sent by a reader of the magazine who accused the businessman, a former mayor of Zakopane, of using unfair commercial practices in real property purchases.