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For several years now, public opinion in the Republic of Poland has been confronted with unlawful use of operational techniques by special services. The matter was publicized especially with respect to surveillance of the media representatives. Contradicting basic principles of democracy, including freedom of the media, the matter has become of great concern to the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights.

The Equality March entitled “Equal rights are not the privileges”, being a part of 7th Day of Equality and Tolerance, took place on 20 November 2010 in Poznań, Republic of Poland with the participation of approximately 300 people. The march was preceded by the contrmanifestation. Six observers of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights were present on the request of the Police.

Trade Union of Public Prosecutors and Prosecutor’s Office Employees in the Republic of Poland demands the salaries of similar amount to those of the “old” European Union countries. Due to this occurrence, Civil Development Forum Foundation together with Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, present a report by Karolina Kremens and Artur Pietryka entitled “Public prosecutor’s professional responsibility”.

Republic of Poland still has not ratified the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine, although it signed this document already in 1999. What is important, in the Republic of Poland there is lack of appropriate provisions that would regulate the issues that arise in the relationship among medicine, ethics and law.

The Marek Nowicki Memorial Lectures is an event organized every year in Budapest and Warsaw. This year in November 2010 the lecture was delivered by Juan E. Méndez and was dedicated respectively to the following issues: “Transitional Justice, Peace and Prevention” and “Recent Trends in Transitional Justice”.

Amnesty International has called on European governments to provide justice for the victims of the CIA’s unlawful rendition and secret detention programmes which led to the enforced disappearance, torture and ill-treatment of a number of people.

Although Republic of Poland is free from the death penalty, the majority of Polish citizens want this penalty back. To change this situation and to help Abolitionists elsewhere, especially in the Republic of Belarus, the informal group “Horizon – against the Death Penalty” together with partners – the Information Office of the Council of Europe in the Republic of Poland, Amnesty International and others – organized the celebration of the European Day Against the Death Penalty (10th of October).

Over the last few years the question of the abuse of the surveillance methods against journalists in the Republic of Poland returns on a regular basis. In reference to the information revealed recently that special services regularly carried out surveillance of top Polish journalists in order to reveal their sources of information, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights issued two letters to Prime Minister expressing its concern in this respect.

On 29 September 2010 UN Human Rights Committee published Concluding Observations on Republic of Poland. They were adopted as a result of the consideration of the Committee of the sixth periodic report of Republic of Poland (CCPR/C/POL/6) at its meetings with Polish delegation held on 12 and 13 October 2010.