2009/11/27 José Alberto Conrado Flores fi.mcwan@gmail.com:
Tomasz, are you being serious? I hope not. Clearly, paragraph § 2 states that if a person"...carries ... object containing the contents specified in § 1", then " The same penalty shall apply ..." to that person. So, if you walk down the street carrying a T-Shirt with the the communist red flag (Che Guevara icon may be open to interpretation), then you are clearly the subject of which paragraph 2 speaks about. The action of walking down the street from point A to point B, does not have in itself (obviously excluding what you may have been doing at point A, or what you may do at point B) neither artistic, nor educational, nor scientific purposes. It would be a farse if a judge acquitted a persons with the ridiculous argument that he was doing what he was doing in an "artistic" or "scientific" or "educational" way. Having said that, I do believe that the law that you gently transcribed in your email is a violation of human rights of expression and freedom of thinking. If I had polish citizenship, I would fight to my bones, in order to have this law vetoed. I am not a communist, but I would give my life to let them express their ideas.
Well, maybe it is wrong translation. par. 2 by "carrying" or "holding" it is meant not holding or carrying for your personal use, but for example putting 1000 T-shirts into truck and crossing the Polish border with this stuff :-) The meaning is that the crime is making bussines on that stuff or producing and distributing it with a main goal to promote any communist regime. Wearing is not forbidden. Moreover, in order to put you to prision the prosecutor will have to prove that your main goal was indeed promotion of communist or fashist regime. If you just wear a T-shirt with Che Gueavera face - you can always say that it is for you not a symbol of current Cuban communist regime but just a symbol of revolutionary liberation of poor people in third world countries from western economic exploitation :-)