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President Bronisław Komorowski will apply to the Constitutional Tribunal for the preventive review of the amendment to the Act on Upbringing in Sobriety and Counteracting Alcoholism, announced Krzysztof Hubert Łaszkiewicz, Secretary of State at the Presidential Chancellery during the Thursday’s press briefing.

The Circuit Court in Poznań, re-hearing the case of Łukasz Kasprowicz, a blogger from Mosina, a town located near Poznań in western Poland, discontinued on 10 January 2013 the criminal proceedings brought against Mr Kasprowicz (case no. IV Ka 1158/12) citing negligible social harm presented by the alleged offence.

In a letter to the HFHR, the Ministry of Interior agreed to review the practice of applying the provisions governing the status of foreigners unable to obtain a passport. According to initial communications with the Head of the Office for Foreigners, the MoI approached the issue differently than administrative organs.

In November 2012, 20 years had passed since the launch of the Legal Assistance for Refugees and Migrants Programme of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. Basic tasks of the Programme include providing free of charge legal advice to foreign clients seeking the HFHR’s assistance, as well as taking advocacy and litigation actions.

The current regime of guarded centres for foreigners, patterned after the military or prison regime, combined with external design and internal architecture of the facilities must be deemed oppressive, shows the report “Migration is not a crime” published by the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights and the Association for Legal Intervention.

The HFHR has submitted the second legal opinion on the Polish Senate’s draft amendment to the Upbringing in Sobriety and Alcoholism Prevention Act, Sejm paper no. 978. In April 2012 the Constitutional Tribunal (case no. K 12/11) found that the provisions relating to the imposition of charges for a stay in a sobriety station were unconstitutional.

“Anton’s Right Here”, the film début of the famous Russian film critic Lyubov Arkus has received the first prize of the 12th International Film Festival WATCH DOCS. Human Rights in Film. Apart from the prize for the Arkus’ documentary, the jury has awarded a special commendation to Ilan Metev’s “Sofia’s Last Ambulance”. The audience award went to ”Call Me Kuchu”.

The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights and the Association for Legal Intervention called on Brig. Gen. Dominik Tracz, Chief Commissioner of the Border Guards, to change a practice of his agency that infringes the right to court exercisable by foreigners applying for the refugee status in Poland.

Amnesty International, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights and the Association for Legal Intervention warn that the draft Foreigners Act fails to provide remedies against detaining immigrant children in prison-like guarded facilities. The coalition of the NGOs has been campaigning for several months seeking to ban the detention of foreign migrants’ children.