The Polish government is planning three years in prison for insulting LGBT people

The Polish government coalition has started a tough fight against “hate speech”. The Ministry of Justice, under the leadership of activist Adam Bodnar, Rep. of State Secretary Krzysztof Śmiszek from the coalition progressive Party of the New Left, is currently preparing changes to the criminal code, according to which a comment against LGBT people that will be considered “offensive” can bring the unfortunate person to several years to jail. The Polish media informs about it.

Since the establishment of Donald Tusk’s left-wing Polish government, the cabinet has been promoting stricter regulations regarding so-called hate speech. A few weeks ago, a proposal for an amendment to the Criminal Code of the Ministry of Justice was published on the website of the Center for Government Legislation, which harshly “solves” this alleged problem.

As the server DoRzeczy points out, the proposal expands the list of discriminatory reasons to include the criteria of disability, age, sex, sexual orientation and gender identity. “The introduction of the proposed solutions will ensure enhanced and full criminal law protection against the use of violence or illegal threats, incitement to hatred, insults and violations of bodily integrity due to disability, age, sex, sexual orientation or gender identity of the victim,” reads the draft amendment to the Criminal Code .

The amendment concerns both violence and threats, as well as incitement to hatred and insults.

According to the proposal, the amended paragraph of Article 199 of the Criminal Code should read: “Whoever uses violence or unlawful threats against a group of people or an individual because of his national, ethnic, racial, political or religious affiliation or because of the absence of any religious belief, disability, age, sex, sexual orientation or gender identity, will be punished with imprisonment from 3 months to 5 years.

In addition, provisions relating to sex, sexual orientation and gender identity were added to Article 256, inter alia, regarding incitement to hatred and Article 257, regarding insults. If the changes pass through the legislative petition, insults to all possible LGBT persons will be punishable by 3 years in prison.

LGBT pressure organizations have apparently been inspired in their fight by recent draconian measures by the Scottish government.

Opposition parties in Poland warn against the proposals. According to them, such changes pose a serious threat to freedom of expression in the country and would effectively force individuals or groups who challenge the basic tenets of gender ideology to self-censor or face prosecution. “We are strongly against it,” said Confederation MP Karina Bosaková. “The direct consequence of criminalizing certain words will actually be the criminalization of conservative, religious and Christian views,” she said.

Paweł Szafraniec of the conservative think tank Ordo Iuris noted that “hate speech” has not yet been defined in the Polish criminal code and warned that any codified version of the term would inevitably be misused to achieve political goals. “The purpose of this legislative proposal is not to protect LGBT people, but to provide a stick for dealing with opponents of the LGBT movement, to prevent them from publishing research that challenges the claims of LGBT activists. It is a political measure to shut people’s mouths and thus block freedom of speech,” said Szafraniec.