Polish Community and Covid Vaccine hesitancy

 

On Tuesday 30^th November, Dr Włodzimierz Meir Jędrzejowicz, President of the London-based Federation of Poles in Great Britain, has written to Mr Sajid Javid, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, expressing his concern at statistical and anecdotal evidence of covid vaccination hesitancy in the Polish community, especially amongst the younger generation. A survey indicated, for instance, that 18% of UK Poles would refuse to be vaccinated and a further 17% did not know if they would. These figures are much higher than for the average population in the United Kingdom. Renewed concerns over the new Omicron variant in the UK could only increase anxiety over this matter.

The Polish ethnic minority in the UK forms more than 1.5% of the UK population and should therefore be considered statistically significant in itself. However, Dr Meir Jędrzejowicz remains concerned that this evidence of hesitancy in the Polish community may remain undetected because its presence is hidden in a much larger statistical group described as “white other”, where the overall level of uptake is reasonably high. He asks Mr Javid whether his Department could take special measures to record the vaccine uptake specifically in the Polish community in the United Kingdom, so that resources can be found to conduct a dedicated information campaign, in the Polish language, aimed at encouraging the Polish ethnic minority in the UK to be vaccinated.

The Federation of Poles in Great Britain CIO is an umbrella organization for Polish organizations in Great Britain and has served as the voice of the Polish community in this country since 1946. 

For any further information please contact Wiktor Moszczynski, Federation spokesman – tel 07786471833 or email wikmos@gmail.com

Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP                                 30 November 2021

Secretary of State for Health and Social Care

39 Victoria Street

London SW1H 0EU

Dear Secretary of State,

The Federation of Poles in Great Britain, which has been the umbrella organizations for

Polish organizations in the UK since 1946, is particularly concerned at the considerable

anecdotal evidence to the effect that many younger members of the large-scale Polish

community in the UK are resisting invitations to take up anti-Covid vaccinations, and also at

the lack of accessible firm ONS and PHE statistics on the Polish minority in this country. We

are writing to you as concern is growing about the new “omicron” mutation.

We are aware of vocal resistance to vaccinations displayed at Polish social events and even

among NHS staff of Polish origin. This has occurred despite efforts by many Polish

organizations such as the Polish Social and Cultural Association, Merseyside Polonia, the

Polish Weekly and ourselves, to hold online forums and make proper medical advice

available on the dangers of Covid-19 using advertised podcasts and social and community

media. Unfortunately, many Polish citizens and Britons with a Polish family background base

their information on health issues on sources in Poland where, despite a vigorous vaccination

campaign, there is considerable hostility in social media to warnings of the dangers of the

Covid pandemic and the need to vaccinate. We are aware furthermore that many Polish

citizens in Britain have not even registered with their local GP, partly because of language

problems, and partly because some still do not understand the system in this country.

Statistical evidence is currently sparse but the Migrant Essential Workers Project initiated by

the Universities of Glasgow and Sheffield had conducted a survey of 1100 members of the

Polish community between February and April 2021which revealed that 18% would not get

vaccinated, 17% did not know, while 2.5% “preferred not to say”. As you are aware, the

hesitancy figures across all communities in the UK is only 4%. This also correlates with the

alarming survey conducted in 2018 by Klaudia Bielecki, Senior Project Manager at NHS

Lothian Digital, which showed that uptake of flu vaccinations among Polish children was

only 25%.

Unfortunately, because citizens of Polish ethnicity are included within the general description

of “White Other” in most social surveys conducted by the NHS and other related institutions

dealing with health, social services, or education, it is difficult for your Department to focus

on the Polish community specifically. However, we are a statistically significant minority,

comprising up to 1.5% of the UK population. The ONS currently claims that there are

738,000 citizens of Polish nationality in this country, but it does not include those born in

Poland and possessing UK passports and nor does that take into account that as many as 1.1

million Polish citizens are recorded as applying successfully for settled status. Consequently,

any significant vaccine hesitancy within the Polish community suggests a considerable

setback for the Covid vaccination programme at large.

We urge therefore that your Department should upgrade its statistics on “White Other” to

identify the Polish minority as statistically significant on health issues, and also mount a

large-scale government publicity in the Polish language to encourage Covid vaccinations,

similar to the ones conducted for South Asian and black minorities, and in which local

authorities and Polish social organizations can participate.

Yours sincerely

Włodzimierz Mier Jedrzejowicz

President, The Federation of Poles in Great Britain, CIO

Deprivation of UK citizenship by Home Office - Letter to The Guardian

 

Dear Editor,

While George Monbiot gave a litany of the repressive measures which the government is seeking to sneak into the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in his timely warning entitled "To ban protest in Britain is a tyrant's gambit" (Guardian 01.12.21), it is also worth remembering the parallel Nationality and Borders Bill. Here the Home Secretary is seeking to sneak in administrative measures to strip naturalized UK citizens of their citizenship on "reasonable grounds" and without notice, in the interests of national security or UK diplomatic relations. 

Consequently, the Home Office would be able to exert undue pressure and even threaten with eventual deportation any naturalized UK citizen who makes awkward statements or would otherwise embarrass the interests of Britain's more repressive allies. It would make the life of UK citizens of Middle East origin particularly vulnerable. It would also be a signal to former EU citizens and their children, struggling to legitimize their hard won  "settled status" in this country by applying for UK citizenship, that they will only eventually possess a lower form of UK citizenship, which could be revoked without warning or appeal if the Home Office thought it would be "conducive to the public good." 

Of course, you should be able to trust the Home Office not to abuse such powers. Or pigs could fly,

Yours faithfully

Wiktor Moszczynski

Published in The Guardian 4th December 2021

Letter to Observer on recognition of prewar property rights in Poland

 

Dear Sir,

Your recent headline "Anger as Poland plans law that will stop Jews reclaiming wartime homes", is misleading and somewhat tunnel visioned. The proposed law change to introduce a 30 year limit on compensation claims for all private property confiscated illegally after World War Two, affects all former private owners, regardless of their ethnic origin, and certainly not just Jews. The Polish Landowners Association has protested vigorously through an open letter to Prime Minister Morawiecki pointing out the inhumanity of this proposal which undermines the honest attempts over many years since 1990 by pre-war owners to have their rights to compensation recognized. The Landowners Association points out that this legislation is not related to wartime reparations for property seized by the Nazis, but that seized by the post-war Communist government, as Nazi crimes were the responsibility of the German government, which never compensated the Polish government directly. It is unfortunate, of course, that the issue of compensation of property by the Communist authorities was never formally resolved by successive Polish democratic governments, and a post-Communist president vetoed a new proposed law on reprivatization in 2001. 

Yours faithfully

Wiktor Moszczynski

Open letter to Lord Frost and Maros Sefcovic on End User Certificates in Northern Ireland

 Dear Lord Frost and Dear Commissioner Maros Sefcovic,

As an Export Documentation Officer in a UK based Chamber of Commerce, and formerly an international trader and freight forwarder, I am concerned at the current stalemate in negotiations over the implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol and the rising political tension. 

I wish to assure you both that a paperless trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland  under the Northern Ireland protocol is still possible. 

Currently the UK government is determined to allow trade without border controls between Great Britain and Northern Ireland in order to ensure the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom. 

The European Union is equally determined to preserve the integrity of the European Union single market and it will not to allow the anomalous status of Northern Ireland, as being part of both the UK and the EU single market, to be an excuse for large scale fraud and smuggling by ruthless international traders which could turn Northern Ireland in to a state dominated by criminal activities.  

Both the EU and the UK are concerned to retain the Good Friday Agreement both in legal terms and in spirit and do not wish to see community feelings in Northern Ireland inflamed by current disagreements over the  Northern Ireland protocol or by the manifestation of a hard border and custom posts in Northern Ireland.

As the UK government remains reluctant to align the UK economy, and particularly its agricultural sector, with that of the European Union, the only solution which could eventually guarantee the paperless movement of goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, but keeping to the terms of the NI protocol, would be by utilizing End User Certificates for Northern Ireland consignees. The principle is similar to the one used in the arms trade or in the despatch of proscribed chemicals and medicines. It would certainly be more reliable than the "trusted traders" or "honesty boxes", proposed by the UK government, and therefore more likely to be acceptable to the EU.

It would be based on five principles:

1/ All consignees in Northern Ireland for goods over 250 pounds in value, should register with a Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce, or equivalent body, approved by the Joint Committee of the EU and the UK. This body would issue each Northern Ireland consignee, which had registered, with an End User Certificate, reissued every year, covering all named goods imported from Great Britain suppliers. This would only be issued to the NI consignee following the receipt of appropriate guarantees from that company, countersigned by their bank. This End User Certificate will state that the goods listed in the certificate are to be consumed or utilized only in Northern Ireland and would not be re-exported to the Republic of Ireland or any other part of the European Union and it would be certified by the relevant issuing body. It could apply to goods being imported over a year or just cover a specific shipment. The list of goods should not just be generic but should include brand names as well, to ensure easy identification of the product.

2/ All consignors from Great Britain to Northern Ireland would dispatch their high value goods, whether by post, courier, air or sea, on a DDP basis (duty paid and delivered). If the goods are covered by an End User Certificate received from the consignee for that particular shipment, then no further paperwork is required. If there is no End User Certificate then the consignor takes responsibility for all paperwork, such as airwaybills, health or phytosanitary certificates, which would be handled by a customs office on the Great Britain mainland. There would be no customs offices in Northern Ireland as all documentation would be dealt with by the Great Britain consignor. If the goods being shipped to Northern Ireland, through the UK, originate from a third country, then a UK agent, such as a forwarding agent, can be appointed to handle any relevant documentation in Great Britain, and can identify the relevant End User Certificate if one has been issued. 

3/ Any shipments despatched by post as personal property, and/or which are less than 250 pounds sterling in value, would require no paperwork. There could also be agreed exceptions, such as the aforementioned guide dogs, or temporary shipments (such as sample goods, or musical instruments for a concert, or sports equipment for a named sports event). 

4. If any Northern Ireland consignee consistently abused this system and re-exported the goods to the European Union proper, they could pay a fine and/or lose their right to have an End User Certificate. Where goods, sent to a N. Ireland supermarket end user, are subsequently purchased as a retail purchase by individual residents of the Republic of Ireland, this would not be considered a breach of the use of this certificate. 

5. Currently, the UK government has declared that it wished to have no documentary control over goods being shipped between Northern Ireland and the Great Britain mainland. This implies that currently they are not seeking reciprocal control over the shipment of goods from Northern Ireland into Great Britain. However, if there was concern in the future over protecting the UK market from fraudulent trade, the End User Certificate system of registration could later be modified to certify a Northern Ireland consignor as a "bona fide" original Northern Ireland producer. 

Although the beginning of the process of registering Northern Ireland importers to make them eligible for an End User certificate may seem bureaucratic, and would require several months of preparation, the advantage afterwards of paperless movement between Great Britain and Northern Ireland would satisfy the main issues raised by the Northern Ireland Protocol, because:

1/ Northern Ireland would be recognized by the EU as integral to the United Kingdom in accordance with Article 6 of the NI Protocol

2/ The integrity of the EU single market is respected in accordance with Article 5 of the NI Protocol

3/ The spirit of the Good Friday Agreement would be preserved as there would be no shipping documentation processed in Northern Ireland and so no provocative customs office to cause unrest among the loyalist community in accordance with Article 1.1 of the NI Protocol

4/ Economically, Northern Ireland would then become a genuine net beneficiary of being both in the United Kingdom and the European Union.

This is the basic outline of the proposal to maintain a paperless trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland which would not conflict with the terms of the Northern Ireland Protocol. For the sake of peace it should be considered seriously and implemented as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely,

Wiktor Moszczynski

End User Certificates for Northern Ireland

 To the Editor of The Times

Dear Editor,

At last you have produced a constructive piece on the Northern Ireland protocol "The Protocol is broken: three ways to fix it." but the suggested measures would still be bureaucratic and expensive, even for approved trusted traders. Obviously the single market should be protected as much as the Good Friday Agreement, otherwise Northern Ireland would become in time a smuggler's paradise abused not only by UK traders, but also by exporters from countries with which the UK now has a trade agreement. 

In order to avoid provocative customs points in Northern Ireland, UK exporters to Northern Ireland could be encouraged to sell on a duty paid delivered basis whereby all phytosanitary or health certificates could be checked in the UK, prior to export. Exporters should also be able to issue end user certificates on receipt of appropriate evidence from the Northern Ireland importer and these goods could then be exported freely without documentation to Northern Ireland and no further. The EU would then be responsible to ensure that these goods did not disappear somewhere in the vast EU market. That could be a burden for the EU but at least then both parties could share the burden of what the two parties had negotiated. The very fact that this burden was shared by both sides should appease the loyalists satisfied that both sides, and not just one, carry the burden of Northern Ireland's unique status.

Of course we could all go back to the UK joining a customs union again, but only after the eventual Northern Ireland plebiscite on its future status.

Yours faithfully,

Wiktor Moszczynski

Again on settled status deadline extension

Dear Sir,

In relation to Mark Townsend's report on "Fears for rights of EU citizens still waiting for settled status", the Federation of Poles in Great Britain, which is the umbrella body for the largest Polish organizations in the UK since 1947, has written to the Prime Minister urging him to extend the deadline for applying for settled status by 6 months. The Federation listed 10 examples of how the Prime Minister's failure to keep his promise to all EU citizens in the UK that their future would be safe after Brexit, is made worse by enforcement of the current deadline. While 5 million have applied successfully, the settled status registration exercise has revealed how little is known of the numbers of EU citizens in this country. Hundreds of thousands hitherto legally resident EU citizens and their families, whose applications have not yet been made or still languish in the Home Office, are likely to face a bleak future of rejection, exploitation and blackmail after June 30th. and could even impede uptake of anti-covid vaccinations, as well as increase community tensions and ensure further unnecessary conflict between the UK and the EU.

Yours faithfully,

Wiktor Moszczynski

Spokesman Federation of Poles in Great Britain.

 Letter published in The Observer 13/06/2021

Fed of Poles in GB letter to Boris Johnson on Settled Status deadline

 

 Dear Prime Minister,

              Our member organizations of the Federation of Poles in Great Britain which has been the voice of the Polish community in Great Britain since 1947, are increasingly dismayed and alarmed by your government’s treatment of our community, as well as of other EU minorities, following the unheralded but foreseeable consequences of the UK leaving the EU.  As a committed historian and author of a book on Winston Churchill, you will remember that we are the children, grandchildren and cultural heirs of those Polish servicemen who served alongside the British Armed Forces against a common enemy in the hour of need, and our generations have since made a valuable contribution to British culture and to the UK economy, both before and after Poland’s accession to the European Union.

              We understand how your commitment to Brexit had to lead inevitably to the termination of free movement of labour between the UK and the EU countries and to the subsequent need to impose a new status for EU citizens who have settled in this country over many years. However, we feel that your government’s determination to impose June 30^th as the deadline for applying for settled or pre-settled status is harmful to the EU citizens here whom you promised many times to protect, both during the referendum campaign and later as Foreign Secretary. It would also be harmful to your relations with your European neighbours and to future social harmony in this country.

              We have taken the liberty to list ten specific problems arising from your government’s current policy and practices towards genuine EU residents in the United Kingdom:

              1/ Although, according to the latest published figures, 5.11 million EU citizens (including 911,240 Polish citizens) have successfully applied for either settled status or pre-settled status, there are still some 300,000 applicants awaiting a decision. There are also a further unknown number who have still not been able to make the application because of the exceptional constraints in the traditional social communication channels resulting from the covid restrictions. The very fact that at least 5 million have applied when there were originally only supposed to be some 3.5 million EU citizens in this country, only illustrates how little information the Office of National Statistics actually has about the number of EU citizens present in this country who may still not be accounted for. It is still a common occurrence to come across Polish citizens even now, who have not heard at all about settled status or the deadline. Sticking to the 30^th June deadline now will leave the Home Office with the enormous task of tracing an unknown number of previously legally resident EU citizens and UK taxpayers whose presence would now become illegal, and will cause many of these hitherto legal residents to enter a clandestine existence that would make them vulnerable to criminal pressures and blackmail.

              2/ We accept that your government has generously agreed recently to allow late applications after June 30th on what you called reasonable grounds, either because of being unaware of the legislation or being deliberately prevented from applying. Yet, the success of these late applications, except in cases of recorded slavery or protected children, will still be dependent on a subjective judgement by the relevant Home Office case officer and could only add to the confusion over the future status of the EU citizen in question.

              3/ Polish citizens who had not yet applied for settled status but who chose to live out the covid crisis with their families in Poland may not be able to return here in time to make their application on UK soil, due to Poland being still on the amber travel list.

              4/ Likewise Polish citizens granted pre-settled status who chose to live out the covid crisis with their families in Poland will have unwittingly broken the terms of their future eligibility for settled status because they are unlikely to be able to spend a full 6 months in the UK during 2020 or 2021, especially if Poland remains on the amber travel list. We trust that this will be taken into consideration when those EU citizens reapply for full settled status.

              5/ Similar problems face Polish and other EU children who are being cared for by local authorities, 61% of whom have not yet had an application for settled status submitted by their local council, mostly because of lack of time to bring all the documentation together. These vulnerable young people could therefore find themselves unwittingly without any legal status to work, study or live in this country, when they achieve adulthood.

              6/ We are also mindful that a number of Polish parents had remained unaware until recently that they must arrange an application for settled status for their children as well, for which they now need to obtain a new Polish passport.  

7/ It is still unclear how EU citizens who have applied for settled status but have not yet received a decision from the Home Office, will be treated in practice in the period after June 30^th as they await the Home Office’s decision. Many of the applicants have complicated case histories, sometimes involving minor criminal convictions and often requiring a higher level of legal advice not often accessible to many of the agencies approved by the Home Office to process settled status applications. It is likely that in the interim period a number of these citizens will experience rejection from poorly informed institutions, employers or landlords, on the basis that they cannot show clear evidence of their right to stay legally in this country.

8/ We regret that the government has still not authorized the issue of a written document confirming settled status. The absence of such a certificate makes a legitimate application for a job or for accommodation that much more difficult, especially with cautious landlords or employers unsure of current legislation. The importance of providing written evidence of their legal status to live and work in this country should be appreciated by a government which has already accepted the principle that any future covid passport should exist as a written document as well as a phone record. A recent judicial review of your government’s decision not to issue printed back up certificates of settled status failed only on the grounds of it being premature before 30^th June, and could yet be reinstated with the courts after that date.

9/ For similar reasons we consider it discriminatory that EU citizens, unlike UK citizens, were not able until now to have access to their Home Office records when appealing against a decision to refuse settled status. This has now been challenged successfully in a judicial review, but we were surprised that the government had to await this judgement before being forced to give such a basic right to EU citizens with a legitimate right to stay in this country.

10/ We were appalled too by the large-scale issue of letters to long term naturalized UK citizens, who were also EU citizens, threatening them with loss of the right to work, receiving benefits and free medical help on the NHS, and then only mentioning in the sixth or seventh paragraph of the letter, that they should ignore the letter if they are UK citizens. All UK citizens who were recipients of such a letter felt it to be an insulting example of possessing only a second-class citizenship status in this country in the eyes of the Home Office.

We recognize that EU citizens newly arriving in this country after December 31^st 2020 are no longer eligible to have settled status. However, our members were surprised at the brutal treatment by the UK Border Agency of these EU citizens who had been unaware of their new reduced status in this country. They were often handcuffed and detained without proper explanation in detention centres. Some had arrived with the promise of a college or employment interview or on the invitation of their relatives and could certainly have been granted a more courteous explanation of what their current rights entailed. We are certain that the UK government would not wish UK citizens to be treated in this way by the border guards in neighbouring EU countries. It is also likely to impede the number of EU citizens who may want to travel here as tourists once the covid restrictions are lifted.  

Whatever the merits of the decision to leave the European Union, this decision should never have implied such a hostile treatment of EU citizens who barely two years ago had received a different treatment in the United Kingdom.

We are convinced that a longer extension of the deadline is still required in a period without lockdown to ensure that our community organizations and local authorities can trace those EU citizens who are still unaccounted for. A decision not to extend the June 30^th deadline for EU citizens to apply for settled status, will not only bring misery and uncertainty to many who until now had lived legally in this country, but will also create a bureaucratic nightmare for UK institutions who could be confronted with a possibly huge increase in recently delegitimized citizens and their families seeking to eke out an existence outside the confines of the law. All normal lines of communication to such people, often with a poor knowledge of English and with no access to the internet, were severely disrupted during the covid crisis and could only be restored after the restrictions of lockdown were removed. It will also be important to ensure that all residents in this country have had legitimate access to the anti-covid vaccination campaign which could be hampered by the fear and suspicion of eventual deportation or loss of employment rights to some of these residents.

We are convinced that so many of these problems and potential injustices would be removed by extending the June 30^th deadline for a further 6 months, in a period bereft of covid restriction. We are sure that such an extension will improve EU-UK relations and will restore the social harmony between EU based national minorities and other citizens in the UK. 

Yours sincerely,

Dr Włodzimierz Mier Jędzrzejowicz

President

Federation of Poles in Gt Britain CIO

PRESS RELEASE

On 4th June 2021 the president of the London based Federation of Poles in Great Britain CIO, Dr Wlodzimierz Mier Jedrzejowicz, sent the attached letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson MP about their dismay and alarm at how some EU citizens, who had lived, worked, drew benefits and paid taxes in this country legally, often for many years, had found themselves, as a result of the Withdrawal Agreement with the EU, facing the possibility of sliding into living outside the law and in danger of deportation, due to not responding in time to the need to upgrade their status by the June 30th deadline this year. 

The Federation have expressed the cause of this dismay in ten clear points. While the majority of EU citizens had made this transition in their status successfully and in time, a large pool of EU citizens have been unable to meet the challenge of applying to this transition in their status, or have not been able to finalize their status for many different reasons as outlined in the letter. A major factor has been the difficulty of adequately publicizing the need to register for settled status during the restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Dr Mier Jedrzejowicz points out that the uncertainty of the status of such EU citizens is not on detromental to them and their families but also to future community relations in this country and increases the administrative burden for the Home Office and other UK institutions in their dealings with this unknown quantity of EU citizens, whose size has only just been revealed by the fact that over 5 miilion applications for settled status have been made when previously there were records of only 3.5 EU citizens living in the United Kingdom.  

Dr Mier jedrzejowicz concludes that "so many of these problems and potential injustices would be removed by extending the June 30th deadline for a further 6 months, in a period without Covid-19 restrictions."

The Federation of Poles in Great Britain is an umbrella organization for the main Polish social, cultural and academic organizations in Great Britain, and has been the voice of the organized Polish community in this country since 1947.

For further information or questions on this appeal from the Federation of Poles in Great Britain, please write to Federation of Poles in Great britain CIO at 240 King Street, London W6 0RF or contact Federation of Poles in GB spokesman, Wiktor Moszczynski, at email wikmos@gmail.com or by telephone 07786471833.

Attachments area

Arrest and detention of Union of Poles in Belarus community leaders

 

Yesterday the London based Federation of Poles in Great Britain CIO, which is the voice of the organized Polish community in Great Britain since 1947, has written to Mr Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, asking to bring to his attention the plight of Polish community leaders from our sister organization, the Union of Poles in Belarus – (Związek Polaków na Białorusi -ZPB), who have been imprisoned in inhumane conditions in the last two months and charged with inciting national hatred as a result of celebrating Polish culture in that country. 

On March 23rd 2021 in response to the organization of a festival commemorating the feast-day of a Polish saint, St. Casimir, ZPB Chairman, Ms Andzelika Borys was arrested and sentenced next day to 15 days’ detention for organizing an illegal gathering.  

Despite international protests Ms Borys was not immediately released after her unjustified sentence. Along with 3 other local Polish community leaders, Irena Biernacka, Maria Tiszkowska, and the journalist Andrzej Poczobut, she has been accused under Section 3, article 130, of the Belarusian Criminal Code of “organizing an illegal mass event”, which carries a possible prison sentence of between 5 and 12 years. The prosecutor claimed that they had been inciting nationalist hatred and seeking to “rehabilitate Nazism” on the grounds that they had celebrated wartime patriotic Polish partisans fighting the Nazis on what was then Polish, and is now Belarusian, soil. The application of Article 130 implied that in holding this festival these leaders would be seeking to incite a riot, possibly even leading to the threat of violent deaths. It was reported by Belsat, the Warsaw based Belarusian TV news channel, that Borys and Poczobut had both been given an offer to have the charges dropped, provided they allowed themselves to be deported to Poland, but they refused. Biernacka and Tiszkowska were deported on May 25th.

Currently Andzelika Borys is being held in an overcrowded cell with 15 others in Zodzhin Prison and is being deprived of a proper place to sleep. We fear, judging by the current regime’s record after the election protests starting in August last year, that in subsequent police interrogations she and her colleagues could be beaten and tortured. However, she has let it be known that on no account would she admit to being guilty of such absurd charges. 

East European commentators see these prisoners as hostages of ex-president Lukaszenka’s ideological conflict with Poland and the West.

Since 2005 the Lukashenka regime, in its aim to curtail the existence of all independent institutions in Belarus, had sought to harass the ZPB, the main Polish cultural organization in Belarus. It arranged to split the organization by creating a puppet ZPB, to whom it transferred the ZPB’s original registration details. Most of the 16 cultural centres that had been flourishing in the previous decade were taken over by the regime and closed.

The currently deregistered ZPB under the active chairmanship of Ms Andzelika Borys is still recognized by many Polish parishes and community organizations in Belarus as being their true representative umbrella organization. 

In his letter to Mr Raab, Dr Włodzimierz Mier-Jedrzejowicz, President of the Federation of Poles, thanks him for his current justifiable condemnation of the Belarusian regime, especially following the hijacking of a civilian airliner , and for his call for the immediate release of the kidnapped Roman Protasevich and more than 1000 other current political prisoners held in Belarus, but he also asks Mr Raab not to overlook the plight of the community leaders of the indigenous Polish ethnic minority in Belarus, whose only real crime is their love and promotion of Polish culture. Dr Mier Jedrzejowicz says that the Federation members would be grateful if Mr Raab could also raise their plight during the G7 summit in Cornwall next week.

In thanking Mr Raab and the UK government for their contribution to defending democracy and human rights worldwide, and particularly in Eastern Europe, the Federation looks forward to the eventual release of all prisoners and full recognition of the rights of ethnic minorities in Belarus.

The Polish diaspora in Belarus is not an immigrant minority. It is an indigenous ethnic minority, which had inhabited the western provinces of Belarus for many centuries, particularly in the provinces surrounding the cities of Grodno, Lida, Szczuczyn and Volkovysk. In 2019, the official Belarusian statistics registered 295,000 citizens as being of Polish nationality, but all evidence indicates that the figure is much higher, and earlier statistics had indicated at least 495,000 inhabitants of Polish nationality in 1989. 

Since the emergence of an independent Belarus in 1991, Polish culture had been allowed to flourish, and children in the Western provinces were educated to speak their native Polish tongue at home and in school. There were two Polish day schools where children were taught Polish literature and Polish history. 16 Polish cultural centres were constructed and flourished in areas where the Polish population was most concentrated. Until 2005 Belarus had been treating its minorities well in accordance with international undertakings given by an earlier Belarusian government concerning the tolerant treatment of national minorities

Attachments area

Post Election Options for Labour

Dear Editor,

As Labour leaders peer out from under the rubble in the former Labour heartlands in England and Scotland they should be aware that the blue collar vote in England is increasingly suspicious that Labour is too fine tuned towards the rights of selected minorities and insufficiently proud of its English heritage. In Scotland it is failing to ride the tide of Scottish national pride. It is also losing votes to more radical Green alternatives. Furthermore Boris Johnson is likely to first mock and then steal any popular policies they may bring forward. 

Labour must lay more stress now on the issues of protecting workers and pensioners' rights following Brexit, make strategic transport, water and energy utilities publicly owned, and pronounce more imaginative green policies. It must  promise to retain the break with the EU for the foreseeable future, but seek to renegotiate the customs union. This is vital to renew EU/UK trade arrangements  and to solve the current Northern ireland border conundrum. 

Also in the case of Scotland, Keir Starmer should promise the Scottish voter that a Labour government would grant an independence referendum, but not earlier than in 2030 when the impact of Brexit, good and bad, can be fairly assessed.

Yours faithfully

Wiktor Moszczynski

Sent to The Times

In place of amnesty in N Ireland

 

Dear Editor,

I can understand the torment that relatives and friends feel over lack of justice for innocent victims of the Troubles and the difficulty for the UK government in having to face continuous litigation over the possibly criminal behaviour by British soldiers in the Northern Ireland Troubles (Politicians condemn troubles amnesty i 07/05/21). 

Surely much of the air could be cleared and some closure offered for victims' loved ones, if the UK introduced a Truth and Reconciliation Court that could hear freely volunteered evidence from British soldiers, and from loyalist and republican former fighters, without  fear of facing criminal proceedings. 

This worked so well in South Africa after the end of apartheid. It would help considerably in healing the untreated  open wounds of anger and distrust that still threaten to undermine the Good Friday Peace Agreement.

Yours faithfully,

Wiktor Moszczynski

Sent to i

Succesful Polish statecraft

 

Letter to Editor of The Spectator

Dear Sirs,

I am sorry to witness my fellow Polish countryman wallowing in his masochistic hatefest towards his own country of origin (Letters to Editor, March 26th), as it was not a pretty spectacle. Also it was historically inaccurate. The Polish kingdom in the 11th and early 12th century, and again, following a period of dynastic divisions, in the 14th century and 15th centuries, was a formidable well run political unit that offered peace and prosperity to its citizens and protected them against German and Tartar invaders and eventually defeated the Teutonic Knights. In the next two centuries it offered the sophisticated model of a parliamentary multiethnic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that tolerated many religions, at a time when Europe was riven with religious wars, and Poland's formidable army defeated the Turkish Empire and protected a vast territory, the largest in Europe, which ensured the supply of wheat and timber to the continent. When, following the greed and corruption of its leading nobles, Poland temporarily became a failed state in the eighteenth century and was dismembered by three powerful neighbours, it was able to sustain a struggle to retain its culture and national spirit for a hundred years in order to rise again like a phoenix at the end of the First World War and set up a strong state combining three regions with different administrative traditions and holding back the Soviets for 20 years. Again when it regained its independence after 1990 it set up a secular well administered democracy that was the only country in Europe not to undergo recession in the last 20 years. Every country can have its ups and downs over a long span of a thousand years but there is absolutely no reason to share Mr Kowalczyk's bleak assessment.

Yours faithfully

Wiktor Moszczynski

Contaminated evidence of The August Trials

Letter to Editor of the Jewish Chronicle (but not published)

Dear Sirs,

With regard to Mark Glanville’s harsh assessment of Poland’s treatment of Jews in his review of “The August Trials” by Andrew Kornbluth (TheJC 19^th March 2021), we again have that sad case of two narratives, one Polish and one Jewish, running in a parallel universe that finds difficulty in coming together into one objective channel of history. Glanville’s opening sentence about a series of trials of Nazi war criminals and their collaborators beginning in August 1944 is, in itself, jarring to Poles, to whom August 1944 means only one thing, the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising against the Germans which led to the betrayal by the Red Army, the death of over 250,000 Polish citizens and the wholesale destruction of Poland’s capital city. The trials lasted more than 6 years, but the very name August Trials was originally part of the Communists’ propaganda to downplay the searing significance of August as the month in which to commemorate the Uprising each year.

While this does not take away from the courage and sense of civic duty with which some individual judges and prosecutors took up their task of investigating wartime collaboration, this does not apply to all of their zealous Communist colleagues seeking to take revenge on Poland’s pre-war elites. It also left them open to being considered by many of their countrymen as collaborators with the new oppressors. However useful the detailed information and accusations about Nazi collaboration and murder supplied in those courts, they will remain suspect to historians as evidence because of the toxic atmosphere of Red terror in which post-war justice was conducted.

I must take issue too with the suggestion that “butchery” of Jews had been taking place in the countryside since 1935. There was undoubted deep-seated antagonism towards the Jewish population in many rural areas, partly because of primitive religious beliefs, and partly because of distrust of an alternative culture that rarely spoke Polish and had little sense of loyalty to the newly emergent Polish state. But without Hitler’s invasion in 1939 and subsequent brutal occupation of Poland, there would have been no holocaust, and no wartime battle for survival by two nations in one country but at different levels of humiliation and extermination.

Obviously I have not read Andrew Kornbluth’s book as it has not yet been published, but I hope that in its detailed examination of the trails of accused collaborators more will emerge to help understand the complexities and the tragedy of Polish-Jewish relations during and after the Second World War.

Yours faithfully

Wiktor Moszczynski

author of "Hello I'm Your Polish Neighbour"

Nord Stream letter in The Observer

 

Dear Sirs,

Further to the article by Simon Tisdall "Biden must punish Putin's cyber-attacks" (21.03.2021) in relation to the ineffectiveness of current sanctions against Russia over the Nord-Stream 2 pipeline project, the geopolitical debate in Germany has been muddied by the insertion of a moral dimension. President Walther Steinmeier has declared that German support for the dual pipeline, which circumvents Poland and Ukraine and supplies gas directly under the Baltic Sea to Germany, is dictated by the need to atone for wartime German crimes against Russia. Of course, Germany should display a sense of guilt towards Russia for these crimes, but not as a justification for isolating Poland and Ukraine to whom Germany has a similar, if not an even greater, moral debt, because they lost far more lives per head of population in the Second World War than Russia proper and, unlike Russia, they are not a current threat to Germany's security and democracy. It is time that the UK took a similar stand to the U.S. government on sanctions over this pipeline. 

Yours faithfully,

Wiktor Moszczynski

Spokesman Federation of Poles in Great Britain

tel 07786471833

working address Flat 88 isambard Court Brentford TE8 8FP

Published in The Observer 28th March 2021

Nord Stream 2

 Letter to the Editor of The Observer

Dear Sirs,

Further to the article by Simon Tisdall "Biden must punish Putin's cyber-attacks" (21.03.2021) in relation to the ineffectiveness of current sanctions against Russia over the Nord-Stream 2 pipeline project, the geopolitical debate in Germany has been muddied by the insertion of a moral dimension. President Walther Steinmeier has declared that German support for the dual pipeline, which circumvents Poland and Ukraine and supplies gas directly under the Baltic Sea to Germany, is dictated by the need to atone for wartime German crimes against Russia. Of course, Germany should display a sense of guilt towards Russia for these crimes, but not as a justification for isolating Poland and Ukraine to whom Germany has a similar, if not an even greater, moral debt, because they lost far more lives per head of population in the Second World War than Russia proper and, unlike Russia, they are not a current threat to Germany's security and democracy. It is time that the UK took a similar stand to the U.S. government on sanctions over this pipeline. 

Yours faithfully,

Wiktor Moszczynski

Spokesman Federation of Poles in Great Britain

tel 07786471833

working address Flat 88 isambard Court Brentford TE8 8FP

Rescue of Polish patient in Plymouth Hospital

Letter to Editor of the Daily Telegraph

Dear Editor, You may be aware that there is currently a high level request from the Polish President’s office and from the Polish Foreign Ministry about the possibility of prolonging and saving the life of a Polish citizen, with initials RS, who is currently lying in what Plymouth doctors describe as a near vegetative state. In early November RS had a heart attack with subsequent brain hypoxia at his home in Southern England and his brain was deprived of oxygen for at least 45 minutes. Since then, he has been in a coma in Derriford Hospital in Plymouth and more than a month later specialists have concluded that his condition would never significantly improve and have consequently denied him life-sustaining treatment, including artificial ventilation, nutrition and fluids. A spokesperson for the University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust has acknowledged that the “main role of the hospital is to provide better care to patients, care for their safety and well-being” but maintains that RS is not likely to recover and that it has s complied with the wishes of the patient’s wife and children in denying the patient further sustenance on the grounds that RS had once expressed the wish not to be a “burden” to his family. This decision has been supported by a court in London and the Court of Appeal has refused the patient’s mother and family members in Poland permission to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. They maintain that as a practising Catholic he would not wish to have his life ended artificially. Despite this treatment the patient remains stubbornly alive. The Polish government, acting on behalf of the family in Poland and aware of the sense of outrage in the Polish media about this prolonged deliberate neglect of a Polish citizen, has already issued him with a diplomatic passport and is prepared to provide transport directly from the hospital in Plymouth to the Budzik Clinic in Olsztyn, Poland, which specializes in the resuscitation of patients in seemingly endless coma. A spokesman for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales and the local bishop in Plymouth, Mark O’Toole, have already appealed to Matt Hancock, unsuccessfully so far, stating that “providing food and water to very sick patients, even by assisted means, is a basic level of care” and not a form of medical treatment, so that the hospital is required to provide it while the patient lives. The bishops urged support for the offer of the Polish government to take responsibility for his future care in Poland. Some 60,000 signatories in the UK have also signed a petition to that effect. I would not normally wish to question decisions made by doctors in the UK as they seek desperate solutions in overcrowded hospitals with limited bedspace amidst the chaos of the covid pandemic, but I feel that if there is a chance of saving this man’s life in a way that required no further burden on the National Health Service, then the British Prime Minister should listen to the direct appeal of President Andrzej Duda and authorize the release of this patient. While there is life there is always hope. I am sure that his wife and children would then be more than grateful that a glimmer of that hope appears that could save their loved one’s quality of life. This decision should be made instantly in order to be effective. Hopefully publicity by your newspaper would play an important part in convincing the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary that this action should be taken now. Perhaps then an opportunity may come where a grateful Polish nation could react with similar generosity to any urgent appeal of a UK citizen in their care. Yours faithfully, Wiktor Moszczynski Dear Editor, You may be aware that there is currently a high level request from the Polish President’s office and from the Polish Foreign Ministry about the possibility of prolonging and saving the life of a Polish citizen, with initials RS, who is currently lying in what Plymouth doctors describe as a near vegetative state. In early November RS had a heart attack with subsequent brain hypoxia at his home in Southern England and his brain was deprived of oxygen for at least 45 minutes. Since then, he has been in a coma in Derriford Hospital in Plymouth and more than a month later specialists have concluded that his condition would never significantly improve and have consequently denied him life-sustaining treatment, including artificial ventilation, nutrition and fluids. A spokesperson for the University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust has acknowledged that the “main role of the hospital is to provide better care to patients, care for their safety and well-being” but maintains that RS is not likely to recover and that it has s complied with the wishes of the patient’s wife and children in denying the patient further sustenance on the grounds that RS had once expressed the wish not to be a “burden” to his family. This decision has been supported by a court in London and the Court of Appeal has refused the patient’s mother and family members in Poland permission to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. They maintain that as a practising Catholic he would not wish to have his life ended artificially. Despite this treatment the patient remains stubbornly alive. The Polish government, acting on behalf of the family in Poland and aware of the sense of outrage in the Polish media about this prolonged deliberate neglect of a Polish citizen, has already issued him with a diplomatic passport and is prepared to provide transport directly from the hospital in Plymouth to the Budzik Clinic in Olsztyn, Poland, which specializes in the resuscitation of patients in seemingly endless coma. A spokesman for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales and the local bishop in Plymouth, Mark O’Toole, have already appealed to Matt Hancock, unsuccessfully so far, stating that “providing food and water to very sick patients, even by assisted means, is a basic level of care” and not a form of medical treatment, so that the hospital is required to provide it while the patient lives. The bishops urged support for the offer of the Polish government to take responsibility for his future care in Poland. Some 60,000 signatories in the UK have also signed a petition to that effect. I would not normally wish to question decisions made by doctors in the UK as they seek desperate solutions in overcrowded hospitals with limited bedspace amidst the chaos of the covid pandemic, but I feel that if there is a chance of saving this man’s life in a way that required no further burden on the National Health Service, then the British Prime Minister should listen to the direct appeal of President Andrzej Duda and authorize the release of this patient. While there is life there is always hope. I am sure that his wife and children would then be more than grateful that a glimmer of that hope appears that could save their loved one’s quality of life. This decision should be made instantly in order to be effective. Hopefully publicity by your newspaper would play an important part in convincing the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary that this action should be taken now. Perhaps then an opportunity may come where a grateful Polish nation could react with similar generosity to any urgent appeal of a UK citizen in their care. Yours faithfully, Wiktor Moszczynski