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 :-)

2009/11/28 Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org:

Out of curiosity, would this include if you made the Communist Manifesto available on your website?

I guess it depends for what purpose you will do this. If from the context of the page seems that your goal is to organise a real revolutionary movement which is going to establish a communist regime in Poland again it might be prosecuted. But if it is just a historical page about communist movement in Poland it is OK under par. 3 of p. 256. The same apply if you would publish a Main Kampf (although in case of Main Kampf it is still under copyright - Hitler died in 1945 so Main Kampf will go to public domain in 2016).

That, itself, is quite different from the totalitarianism of Stalinism or Maoism.

Yes. Sure - depending on context again. In fact there is Polish Communist Party which is quite legal and formally registered organisation. It has its own website:

http://www.kompol.org/

although the website is located outside Poland (I guess - just in case) :-) This party in their bylaws claims that it is going to establish "democratic communist system" not by force-revolution but by election. The party publish their newspaper which is legally printed in Poland:

http://www.kompol.org/brzask/index.html

On the other hand we have extreme-right wing tiny parties which are quite close to be fascists although they also claim officially that they are not. See for example:

http://www.polskapartianarodowa.org/

Anyway - this party is actually under prosecution - because their leader was accused for open, aggressive antisemitism, and as you can see their website is also located outside Poland...

If you ask me if the current change of law is silly - I can agree with you :-) But I don't think if the results is going to be mass prosecution of foreign tourist parading in Che T-shirts on Polish streets, although some silly policeman may warn you to undress it and if you say no - it may end up in court when you can claim that wearing Che T-shirt do not fulfill the conditions of promoting any communist regime. I guess soon after the formal publishing of this law there will be left-wing guys who especially wear T-shirts with Che go to the street in order to be prosecuted and prove at the court that they can still do it legally :-)