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On the occasion of the World Refugee Day, Amnesty International, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, the Polish Humanitarian Action and the Association for Legal Intervention warn about a difficult situation of migrant children in Poland. In 2011, more than 500 foreign children, including refugee children, and their guardians were detained and placed in guarded centres for foreigners.

The HFHR has appealed to Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament and to the European External Action Service on the conditions of detention and treatment of Ales Belyatsky, a Belarusian human rights defender, who is currently serving his time in a penal colony. Mr Belyatsky was sentenced to four and half years in a high-security colony and property forfeiture for alleged tax evasion.

The HFHR requested General Krzysztof Bondaryk, head of the Internal Security Agency, to take decisive actions in the case of repetitive anti-Semitic assaults in Lublin. In its intervention, the HFHR recalled the case of Tomasz Pietrasiewicz, leader of The Grodzka Gate –Theatre NN in Lublin.

The Supreme Court dismissed the cessation appeal of M.R., a former assistant to a Supreme Administrative Court judge and a trainee legal advisor, indicating that a role of a judicial assistant may not be combined with a legal advisor’s professional training.

An open letter concerning the amendment to the Assemblies Act has been a joint initiative involving 32 NGOs, including the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, the Association of Leaders of Local Civic Groups, the Stefan Batory Foundation, the Panoptykon Foundation, the Campaign against Homophobia and the Association for Legal Intervention.

The European Court of Human Rights released the judgment in the case Grzywaczewski v. Poland. Once again, ECtHR found that Poland had violated Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, prohibiting the use of torture or other inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.

During a session in Geneva the United Nations Human Rights Council made an evaluation of the Poland’s record of compliance with the country’s human rights obligations under the Universal Periodic Review, UPR. The Council issued as many as 124 recommendations to Poland.

The HFHR presented its comments on the latest legislative proposal of the regulation of correction in press law to the Senate’s Legislative Committee. In its position statement, the HFHR positively assessed the proposed modifications to the current draft amendment. The new proposals changed its previous version which received wide criticism from, among others, the Helsinki Foundation, press publishers and journalists or even the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

In February 2012, the Circuit Court in Nowy Sącz ruled that former Moscow prosecutor Alexander Ignatenko may be extradited to Russia. A month later, the Appellate Court in Cracow upheld the first-instance court decision. The case files were sent to the Minister of Justice who is to finally decide on Mr Ignatenko’s extradition. The HFHR issued an opinion in this case.