Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Polish government: no statue of of limitations for Communist Crimes

According to existing laws after August 1st all crimes, except murder, committed by the communist regime (before 1989) will not be prosecuted.
However, the current government and its ministry of justice think that nothing was done to prosecute those crimes. Therefore, they are working on the legislation that will make sure that there is no time limit on that.

- There is no consent for any limitation of communist crimes. The impunity of perpetrators is demoralizing and encourages the repetition of crimes - says Jarosław Szarek, President of the Institute of National Remembrance. - August 1, 2020 is the day when they are supposed to expire and prosecution should end, but there is no fear that there will be the statue of limitations, just like the is no statue of limitations on Nazi German crimes.

"It is worth to constantly emphasize that many perpetrators of communist crimes escaped responsibility, because after 1989 there was no will to prosecute these crimes.... There was no will to judge. Dozens of examples can be given. It is a symbol of the problem that only now that the portraits of the presidents of the communist era were removed from the Supreme Court. The judiciary, or what we call "the justice system", was one of the pillars of the communist system. And after 1989 it was a segment (of the system) that was not cut off from links to the times of the Polish People's Republic. This is one of the reasons that issues from the past were not resolved effectively (...) "