According to provisions of Article 130 of the amended Penal Code, “acting in favor of foreign/hostile intelligence services against the Republic of Poland” is punishable by no less than 5 years in prison.
Moreover, the same Article 130 § 9 states that: “whoever while acting in favor of foreign intelligence performs disinformation, which consists in distributing/spreading/ untrue or misleading information in order to cause serious disturbances in political or economic structure of the Republic of Poland, an allied country, or an international organization that the Republic of Poland is a member of, or to prompt a public authority of the Republic of Poland, an allied country, or an international organization that the Republic of Poland is a member of, to take or abandon a specific action” – is subject to a sentence of no less than 8 years in prison.
Furthermore, the amended Article 112a stipulates that the same punishment (no less than 8 years in prison) applies to any Polish or foreign citizen who commits a prohibited act (“in favor of foreign intelligence services”), while using IT systems, telecommunication systems, or network, if the said prohibited act causes, or could cause, a result which violates the interests of the state in the areas of protection of independence, territorial integrity, external or internal security, defense, foreign policy, international stature, and scientific or economic potential.
Because of their extremely vague and imprecise phrasing based on “probability”, as well as their very wide scope, these regulations may easily be used by the ruling camp and its various affiliated agencies (such as state-controlled companies) to suppress, and punish with long prison sentences, virtually any criticism voiced against their policies and actions.
This law might especially be used to suppress and punish any criticism of the Polish government’s foreign policy, such as its opposition to the European Union’s insistence on the observance of the rule of law, or its relations with Ukraine invaded by Russia.
This law could also be used to silence criticism of the undefined ‘internal and external security’, which is the ruling PiS party’s main campaign slogan for the October 15th parliamentary election. This concerns, in particular, any criticism of the government’s cruel and illegal treatment of refugees at the Polish-Belarusian border.
Economic policies may also be targeted, including high inflation, the actions of the central bank or the lack thereof, management decisions by the heads of state-controlled companies, specifically the sale by the oil giant Orlen of large assets to Saudis and Hungarians (both cooperating with Putin’s Russia).
Moreover, Article 112a suggests that sanctions for such “espionage activities” may not be limited to mainstream media, but extend to internet activity, social media posts, citizen journalism, and even emails and text messages.
Should this law be used arbitrarily by the authoritarian regime, it will have catastrophic consequences for any form of public participation, especially journalism.
It very much resembles Putin’s Russia and Erdogan’s Turkey.
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