In 2010, a young couple from Berlin – Anna, a Polish journalist, and Thomas, a German photographer – decided to live on their globetrotting dream – and they decided to do it with their 6-month-old daugther Hanna on board. With a fully-packed Renault Espace they made a half-a-year-long road trip around the Black Sea, through the Caucasus to the Caspian Sea. The idea worked out so well that in 2012, already with their second daughter Mila, they travelled in Central America from Mexico down to Guatemala, Belize and Honduras.

From their first trip on they decided to share their unusual experiences through their blog, The Family Without Borders [en; Facebook]. The interest turned out to be so significant that in 2011 the blog was named the Best Travel Blog by the Polish edition of the National Geographic.

Global Voices (GV): Let’s imagine 25 years forward. Your daughters have their own children and want to go travelling with their babies. What is your reaction?

Mexico (Yukatan), Holbox Island. Photo © Thomas Alboth, used with permission.

Anna (A): I hope it will be this way. Recently, we've had some discussions about parents, kids and grandkids and how it all can change. We were a bit afraid that maybe they will choose a totally other way of life than we did and that it would be hard to accept it if they would start saying things like, “I want to go to a hotel.” But on the other hand, the more they grow up the more I feel that I’m scared that something can happen to them, all these mother-ish things.

Thomas (T): I would have wanted it. But I’m also not so sure if they will like this lifestyle, I have friends who grew up in a community flat and then they turned into the opposite. I’m also pretty happy to be completely different from my parents. So maybe one day they will stay in a hotel, will have nice rolling suitcases and that’s ok.

GV: You received the National Geographic title for the Best Travel Blog in 2011. Why do you think your blog became so successful?

A: I think it was two things. First, we didn’t plan for it to be big, so we were just doing what we liked, and I think these things are always going bigger when you just do what you love. We have known all these travel bloggers who had business plans, but for us it was basically writing for the grandparents, so that they could see Hanna safe and smiling. That was the beginning. After a while we started to check the statistics and we saw that people from 20, 40, 50 countries were visiting the blog, and we were like, “wow”. There is this generation of young Europeans who are studying abroad, travelling, making international couples and they think that if they have kids it will be all over. I think when they see what we did, they see hope that it all really doesn’t have to be over.

The whole family in their flat in Berlin. Photo by Kasia Odrozek

GV: Did you have a clear work division: who is writing, who takes pictures and so on?

A: Yes, we had clear divided tasks. It happened that I made some pictures but not often, normally the camera was in his hands all the time. I was writing the posts, Thomas wrote maybe two posts in these three years. For the blog he does all the technical things and I do all the human communication work. And on the road Thomas usually drives and I usually tell him where we are going [laughing]. The whole thing works when we are doing it together. A couple of weeks ago, he was in Burma and I was in Palestine and we didn’t post anything on the blog, and it felt strange.

GV: Would your experience be different without the blog?

A: For me having the blog was very motivating to get more knowledge about everything. On the second trip, I was writing in a much more journalistic way, so I was noting many more things, asking for more context while talking to people, taking leaflets in museums and so on. I don’t know if I would do all of this without knowing that I will publish it.

T: I was a bit jealous, because writing means reprocessing, while editing pictures is not the same experience, you don’t need more knowledge, you don’t have to understand the situation to make a picture.

At Lake Sevan in Armenia. Photo © Thomas Alboth, used with permission.

GV: What is your favorite memory when you look back at your travels?

T: More than a memory it is a feeling of being self-paced, that you decide about your own life. When you stay in one place you get into this daily rhythm, you get up, grab a coffee in the morning, you take a tram or metro and you go to your office, and 80 percent of your day is predictable. That’s what I liked about the trip, for a half of the year you decide what you want to do.

GV: Was there a moment when you thought, “This was a mistake”?

A: There was one such moment when I was scared and I thought that all these people saying that we were irresponsible parents were right. It was the night at a hotel in Guatemala where we saw three big men with guns passing by the corridor, talking angrily on the phone. We had to do something to feel better, so we asked them if they were dangerous. We didn’t speak too much Spanish but, luckily, we knew the word peligroso, dangerous. They answered “yes, but not for you and not here.” Then we learned that in Guatemala everybody has guns because they hadn’t been disarmed after the civil war.

GV: You say that your travels were about people and their stories. What was the craziest thing you heard or experienced?

T: If you come from a different world, even just the way people live their everyday lives seems interesting and sometimes strange.

The family has to say goodybe to their hosts in Guatemala, Chilasco waterfall. Photo © Anna Alboth, used with permission.

A: During the second trip, in Guatemala, we were hosted by a Mayan family in their small house with plastic chairs and a TV. After we talked to them, they were surprised, but not by the fact that we were travelling for so long – but that we could live without a TV for so long. Then in the evening, when I started to cut potatoes for a soup, all these small girls immediately started to help me because that’s what they do, they do everything together. When we were leaving, they were asking when we would come back and it was heartbreaking, we wanted to say that we would call but they didn’t have a phone, they wanted to write a letter but they didn’t know how to write.

GV: Any plans for the future?

A:We have to go on a trip again, of course. But before we do it, I need to finish my book on Central America, then we will go travelling again.

On March 26, 2013, The Family Without Borders will share their pictures and stories at a slideshow presentation at the Globetrotter shop in Berlin. For more details, please visit their blog or Facebook.

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He lives in Warsaw's district of Praga, will soon graduate with a degree in American Studies and Philology with a focus on teaching. However, from the beginning of his studies, he was thinking of becoming a translator rather than a teacher. And even though his biggest talent is his English proficiency, for the past 10 years it has been music that remained his strongest passion.

Global Voices (GV): Who is Adam Dobrzynski? A musician? A student? A translator?

Adam Dobrzynski (AD): Most of all, I am just myself, music is my passion, translation is something that, besides music, I want to do in life, something that I’m best at. To be honest, studying is just a professional formation. I think one could call me part translator, part musician?

Adam Dobrzynski, photo used with permission of the band Wanderer.

GV: Is your band a good material for an article?

AD: I think we are all fanatics of music, we are very determined to create something on our own – probably because of that we are still looking for our musical identity. We have some of our own material, we can’t complain about inspiration…just pass by one of our upcoming concerts. Despite some rotations in the band, we remain strong and tight, we want to achieve a lot in the world of music.

GV: What are your musical inspirations?

AD: Rock and metal most of all, in all its colours and varieties. Also, classical music, but just occasionally – sometimes I listen to Wagner. For more than 10 years I’ve been fascinated by heavy, fast tones, I think they are a perfect carrier of energy.

GV: How did you end up in the band Wanderer?

AD: Music is my passion, for the last 10 years I’ve been listening to a whole range of rock music, from rather light to very heavy sounds. It’s the music that has shaped my character, the way I perceive the world, et cetera. At some point, I found time to grab the guitar, I wanted to try myself out in creating music that I love and fulfill the dream of playing in a band. Despite initial trouble and a short career of my former band, I did not stop exercising and finally got rewarded. I got a chance to join Wanderer as the second guitar. From the first rehearsals and concerts I felt that this was it, that it was worth sacrificing life for playing. We’ve been playing together for more than one year now and it is, in my opinion, my biggest achievement and pride. Why? Because I live according to the rule that you have to fulfill your dreams without counting on somebody else, without waiting for financial stability, we just have one life, there is nothing to wait for.

GV: And what was your path to GV?

AD: A friend showed me this website in May. I thought: “Why not? To do something I like, something that is meaningful and to gain some experience? Good bargain.” I’ve always wanted to translate and work according to these kind of rules, so I took a look at the offer, I filled out the form… and here I am.

GV: Do you think that GV should write more about music?

AD: Of course, this is something that moves the whole world, that connects millions of people. I think that many people would like to read information, news (or maybe stories?) from the world of music.

Members of the band Wanderer, photo used with permission of the band.

GV: Are you active in social media? Do you have a blog?

AD: No, I’m a bit asocial. And besides that, I don’t even have enough time to start this kind of activity.

GV: What is the role of new technology in your life?

AD: I don’t like changes at all, I’m still using my old Nokia and the only “new technologies” I’m investing in are an iPod and a multi-effect for my guitar.

GV: Are you a bit of an activist? Did you take part in the winter protests against ACTA?

AD: I don’t consider myself an activist, I’m not a part of any group… but I did go to the protest against ACTA. I also remember our first concert in Warsaw, we dedicated it to the fight against ACTA, we have sacrificed our old T-shirts to make protest banners against this bill. We have expressed our “endorsement” for ACTA in the song “Drill” that we played for the first time at this concert [unfortunately, the song is not recorded yet].

GV: Do you think that young people in Poland should get more engaged in “internet politics”?

AD: Sure, Internet is nowadays probably the kind of media that young people feel the closest connection with. Where, if not there, to express your opinions and fight for a better tomorrow? And young people have to get involved in politics – they fight for their future.

GV: In your opinion, how will the world of media look like in 10 years and what will be the role of citizen media?

AD: I think everything will speed up even more, the flow of information will be even bigger, Internet will be king among the mass media. Social media will be the main point of discussion, self-expression and opinion-forming, a platform to exchange opinions.

GV: Would you like to add anything?

AD: I feel proud translating posts for GV. Why? I’m doing something meaningful, I bring the events and stories from the world closer to the Polish public. It’s very important.

You can find the music of the band Wanderer on MySpace, and the GV profile of Adam here.

Written by Kasia Odrozek · Translated by Kasia Odrozek · View original post [pl] · comments (1)
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So far, 30 countries have signed ACTA, but it is the European Parliament that has the final say on whether the agreement will come into effect. The voting is supposed to take place on the plenary session in the beginning of July.

They say ACTA is dead

Some 500 people protested against ACTA in Berlin. Photo by Kasia Odrozek

At the first sight, the relatively modest number of protesters may seem a bit disappointing compared to many thousands of protesters that took to the streets in February. Have people forgotten about ACTA?

One doesn't have to look far for possible answers. Besides the fact that the European Football Championship is stealing almost all of the attention these days, there is a strong belief that ACTA is dead and the worst danger is over. On the website of the European Digital Rights organization one could read this on June 9:

After all of the announcements of ACTA's death, one would wonder why anybody would have felt the need to turn up to the anti-ACTA demonstrations today. In April, the European Parliamentarian in charge of the ACTA dossier said that ACTA was dead. In May, the European Commissioner for the Information Society, Neelie Kroes, said that ACTA was dead. Now, in June, four different European Parliament Committees rejected ACTA. Was tumbleweed going to be the only participant at the ACTA demonstrations?

On the European Action Day Against ACTA activists marched through the streets of Berlin. Photo by Kasia Odrozek

So much the more positive is the fact that thousands of people across Europe and several hundreds in Germany went on the streets to send yet another signal to the politicians and a reminder for the society. A German activist and blogger, mspr0, who was present at the demonstration, wrote [de] on his blog on June 8:

I know it seems that it's all over and done now. But it's not. In the background they are trying to rescue what is left to rescue and we need to send a clear signal.

Why was ACTA a good idea?

Besides mspr0, there were several other activists speaking at the manifestation. Peter Sunde, co-founder of the Pirate Bay and Flattr, introduced Henrik Chulu from a Danish digital rights organisation Bitbureauet.

In the video below, posted on YouTube on June 10 by the author of this post, you can see Henrik talking about the importance of staying vigilant, as ACTA is not the last bill that we will be confronted with. He also pointed out that the agreement did something good for Europe by remindidng us of how fragile and important internet freedom is and causing people to get politically engaged and stand up for their digital rights.

Here you can find a photo report from the protest, uploaded by the German NGO Digitale Gesellschaft, a supporter of the protest and a leading advocate in the German anti-ACTA movement.

"Let our Internet in peace, or we will take your fax-machines away" – activists at the demonstration on June 6, 2012. Photo by Kasia Odrozek

The European Anti-ACTA Action Day is over, but the voting in the EP is still on the agenda. It's good to know that netizens are keeping an eye on the parliamentarians, even if they are “just” a couple of hundreds activists. We've seen already that, if needed, they are able to motivate hundreds of thousands.

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Global Voices wouldn't miss the opportunity to be present as well, especially as this year's focus was participation and citizen journalism – arguably, the future of the news.

#ijf12 became a trending topic on Twitter. Picture: official logo.

With panel discussions, keynote speeches, workshops, networking and interviews taking place everywhere, the fast-paced atmosphere of the festival could sweep you away, especially in the heat of Italian weather. People bearing the Festival's red badges saying ‘volunteer‘, ‘speaker’ or ‘staff’ took over this beautiful city and turned it into a melting pot of visionary ideas.

But enough about the pleasant circumstances. What were they talking about and why was it so important?

Open journalism is the future

Participation and collaboration in journalism stole the show; the most attended sessions touched on sourcing citizen reporters, working with readers to fact-check and even bringing them into the heart of the editorial process. Here are some examples of the discussions:

The panels about the future of news focused on community participation and ways to engage the public in journalistic processes. Mark Johnson, community editor at The Economist, stressed the importance that reaching out to social media and engaging journalists in dialogue with readers.

A young Costa Rican journalist interviews her Ugandan colleague Kevin Doris Ejon – the first journalist to interview Joseph Kony. Photo: Kasia Odrozek

Wadah Khanfar of Al Jazeera proposed a vision for integral media in his keynote, which was livetweeted on his Twitter account, according to which journalists will actually no longer be producing the news. According to Khanfar, the news will be made through social networks and by smart bloggers, and the role of journalists will be to filter and sort out the relevant ones in order to steer the public discussion.

In addition, he stressed on Twitter:

@khanfarw: Corporations that owned the story are now challenged by those on the ground that are producing quality and accurate reports. #IJF12

In his keynote, Andy Carvin, who as he claimed, could be rather described as an information DJ [Disc Jockey] than a reporter, talked about the importance of experimenting to find new ways of doing journalism and presented his approach of reporting the Arab Spring via Twitter.

Andy Carvin's talk about tweeting the Arab Spring. Picture: Kasia Odrozek

On another panel Paul Lewis talked about the innovative culture of the Guardian and its move towards “open news”, which is more than collaboration. It is bringing readers into the newsroom and involving them in the future direction of the newspaper.

Bringing technology and data journalism into the newsroom were also key themes at the Festival, with a series of workshops on data journalism hosted by the Open Knowledge Foundation.

(Rising Voices grantee Friends of Januária from Brazil was recently featured in the new Data Journalism Handbook by the Open Knowledge Foundation and the European Journalism Centre.)

Stefano Rodotà, Emeritus Professor of law, while talking about the intersection of media, democracy, power and knowledge in his keynote speech, stated that denying someone Internet access because of downloading copyrighted material should be considered a violation of human rights.

Global Voices takes the stage

Besides a strong presence of Global Voices members, mainly from Global Voices in Italian, the Italian Editor, Bernardo Parrella, and Co-Founder of Voci Globali, Antonella Sinopoli, hosted and participated in several panel discussions. (Here is a self-produced Flickr photostream).

While debating the importance of digital and social publishing and “aggregating the news aggregation” the guests mentioned several books published by independent publishing house Quinta di Copertina in collaboration with Global Voices in Italian, ‘70 chilometri dall'Italia: la rivolta del gelsomino‘, as well as Sinopoli's book ‘White Arrogance‘.

GV at IJF12: Bernardo Parrella and Antonella Sinopoli in the panel about open journalism. Photo: Kasia Odrozek

At the panel on news reporting and social media curation, representatives of BBC, France24 and NPR debated with Bernardo Parrella about the role of citizens in the making of the news and the verification problem. The BBC insisted that traditional media, obliged by the trust put on them, provide verified news and a “whole truth” to the audience that citizen media aren't really able to. Parrella drew attention to the importance of experimenting and opening up of the mainstream media to the public.

There were many other highly interesting conversations taking place and you can find videos, press releases and articles covering almost all the events at the Festival's website.

Furthermore, consider passing by next year, as it seems the festival gets better with every edition according to Evgeny Morozov who tweeted:

@evgenymorozov: Had a very good time @journalismfest in Perugia this week – it gets better every year (and I thought last year it was impossible!)

Paul Lewis seemed to sum it all up in his tweet:

@PaulLewis: Is Perugia's #ijf12 the most enjoyable conference for journalists in the world? #ijf2012

Definitely!

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In what kind of country are we living and how pathetic are the media here, if an article like this had to be written by an Internet portal with a poodle in their logo?

With these humble words a popular Polish gossip portal, Pudelek, decided [pl] to join the ACTA discussion with a post on February 10, 2012, accusing the Polish mainstream media and local celebrities of missing the point and of ignorance in the debate about the controversial legislation.

Meanwhile, on February 11, ACTA protesters took the streets in many European countries, including Poland.

It has been almost three weeks since January 24, when Polish netizens started their protest – which soon turned Europe-wide – against the international agreement that, according to them, presents a threat to Internet freedom. Numerous Internet initiatives [pl] and massive live protests on the streets of many Polish cities induced a debate [pl] about the “generation acta” and their motivations.

While major information services published political analyses and focused on the events that shaped the debate (e.g., Anonymous attacks [pl] and deputies of a certain party wearing [pl] Guy Fawkes masks in the parliament), the most popular Polish gossip portal decided to speak up [pl] on the “real motives of the raging young people” in an article called, “ACTA: How celebrities lost contact with reality”:

The biggest Polish gossip portal decided to speak up for young people. Screenshot of http://pudelek.pl

So let's write about what is not being spoken out – about what is the real reason for the protest and anger that suddenly surprises everybody now: the Internet “piracy” for private use is today the only way for millions of young Poles to live at least a bit like their collegues from Western Europe. To have access to culture, entertainment, to be able to watch a movie on the computer with the girlfriend. This is actually not only a Polish problem. This is a problem of the whole young population in Europe that doesn't have any chance to do a career like their parents did and buy the same apartments they once bought. Everyone who went lately to Italy, Spain, Portugal or even France or Great Britain and took a look at something more than monuments, knows that. In Poland, where almost everything is more expensive than in the West and salaries are three times lower, it is especially visible, like looking through a magnifying glass. But for some people it is apparently not clear enough, even after massive demonstrations with -10°C cold.

The portal criticises some celebrities for their statements about the protests and for defending radical copyright and calling file-sharing a “theft” – while being so well off with money. The authors also ask [pl] why the media coverage of the movement isn't big enough considering such a massive scale of the protests:

Why aren't TV stations shouting about it? 30,000 people chanting, jumping on frost in Krakow! What happened in the last years that, according to them, was more important than this?

The portal recalls [pl] a couple of YouTube videos showing the recent protests, stressing that these are just a few examples out of many, many more. Here is an example showing 30,000 protesters in Krakow, uploaded on YouTube by skitowiec on January 26:

These are just a couple of videos. Do they make you reflect? If somebody doesn't appreciate this, belittles it, it means that he's completely not up-to-date and doesn't understand what actually happened here. What does this civilisation offer to young people if it takes cheap culture and entertainment away from them? Does it offer a good job? Perspectives? You got to be kidding me.

The reaction to the post was enormous: the article has reached nearly 7,000 supporting comments and 8,000 shares on Facebook. The compelling post caused also an immediate reaction from the mainstream media. A journalist from Gazeta.pl [pl], Pawel Wronski, published a mocking article titled, “On the barricades with a poodle” [pl], in which he stressed the tabloid character of the medium and its attempt to comment on a serious matter. The reaction of the readers in the newspaper's forum was devastating [pl] for the journalist.

Pudelek itself answered [pl] with another post:

It's hard to accept the truth, especially when it comes from a pink gossip portal. But what does it have to do with anything? It's just about millions of people who can read it now. Because it's not our own opinions we wrote down here. We wrote down what you [readers] have been sending to us in thousands of emails. [...] The problem is that we wrote the very thing that you [the media] were afraid to write [...]. How can you be sure that you're expressing somebody's voice, that you can look down on millions of our readers with distaste and that you are an authority for anybody? Do you think that smart people don't read gossip?

Aleksandra Jabloonska supports [pl] Pudelek's post on Facebook and talks about her experience:

I'm impressed that somebody finally had the courage to write it – it's just a pity (no offense) that it had to be the editors of “Pudelek” and not “the free TV and facts for people.” I will give a real-life example: I'm studiyng film and theater. We are required to know all the film history. If I had to watch legally all these movies that they need me to know, I would have to spend [too much money]. But that's not a problem for the state or the university as long as I have internet access – because they assume that I can afford it. I wonder how they imagine such education after implementing ACTA, if the university is not able to make these materials available and the state doesn't give a damn. It's sad, really sad.

Young Poles protest against ACTA but also against the everyday reality. Image by Alexey Sidorenko, used with permission.

Karolina, for whom the article was the first she read on a gossip portal, comments [pl] under the post:

For the first time I've read an article on “Pudelek.” A wise and balanced text. A text describing the world of celebrities whose only contact with poverty is limited to attending a charity gala. It's a weird country, Poland.

Martyna Tina comments [pl] on Facebook:

I was very happy to see that you took our opinions under consideration and wrote about the ACTA problem. Because although this doesn't concern only young people, the older didn't make the effort to read even a bit. They watch TV and there of course the cameramen film in a way to show the least people (seriously!) and they don't say: Poles went on the streets – but they say: somehow not so many people showed up for the protest. They marginalise the problem, labelling it to youth, to the internet, to pirates, to thieves. Thieves are the big corporations, bankers and dishonest politicians.

Blogger niekontent doesn't believe in charitable intentions of the gossip portal and reminds [pl] them that the mainsteram media actually provided a pretty big coverage on ACTA:

Here is the news: with all my respect for the talented editors, but “Pudelek” doesn't touch upon such topics as ACTA unless they become relevant (meaning “interesting,” meaning “clickable”) for the street. This is the logic behind a service that achieved a huge success based on this simple mechanism.

A truth hard to deny, but still, the immense reaction to the post on a portal that normally writes about movie stars’ break-ups and best Grammy outfits, should make the media reflect on their overall condition. Are they mirroring the voice of the young generation, are they able to listen? To some extent, young Poles consider the protest an occassion to express their anger against the political elites and the reality they have to live in day by day.

Blogger niekontent finds [pl] the discussion somewhat sad:

It's sad how much Gazeta Wyborcza, one of the most important representatives of the so-called “old media,” stopped to understand the young generations of Poles, those who grew up with the internet. What is worse, sometimes I'm afraid that Gazeta Wyborcza (generally speaking, not individual people) stopped to understand what internet is about. [...] It's sad that one of the most aggresive and uncompromising tabloids, which “Pudelek” is, became an authority for a mass of young Poles. [...] What is also sad is that the voice of “Pudelek” in this debate sounds just stronger, more honest.

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In an interview with a radio station, Boni said [pl] that it was impossible not to sign the agreement, because it was too late: Poland joined the negotiation process in 2008 and all the other European countries have already signed it. He added that Poland “should attach a clause to the treaty that would show how we interpret these articles”.

Boni had promised [pl] broad public consultations during the European ratification process. Several Polish NGOshave expressed [pl] their disappointment with the government's stance on ACTA and appealed to change the decision.

Since January 21, online hackers calling themselves Anonymous have been attacking and shuting down government websites almost constantly, in a chaotic protest against the plans to sign the international treaty on Thursday.

User @Anonymouswiki owns up to the web attacks on the websites of the prime minister, the parliament and other government entities. Screenshot: Twitter @Anonymouswiki

Although the hackers still enjoy strong support among netizens, and the attacks were one of the reasons the mainstream media picked up the topic of ACTA, the group also faces criticism from key Polish tech-bloggers.

Maciej Gajewski from Spidersweb calls them [pl] “crying kids worried for their mp3″ and regrets that they became the face of the protest giving the government officials an argument against the movement:

Critics, mistrust and suspicion is one thing, but panic, mumbling and spreading disinformation is another thing. Looking at some finds on the biggest Polish social news platforms, looking at the comments of some readers, I get the impression that the lion's share of the protesters have no idea what ACTA is about. They've made up fantastic stories and are passing them on. The mass is getting crazy “Impale PM”, “Let's burn the Minister on the stake!”, “They will all lock us down in prisons!”. And then also Anonymous, who just make the whole protest look ridiculous in the eyes of mature older voters.

900+ Polish websites go dark on January 24

"This is what the Internet might look like very soon. NO to ACTA" – over 900 Polish websites decided to go dark on January 24 in protest against the treaty. Screenshot: http://spidersweb.pl

As opposed to the web attacks on government websites, Antyweb called [pl] on his blog on January 23 for a protest “in a cultured way, namely, a blackout” and provided a script and an instruction on how to do it. In response, more than 900 websites decided to “go dark” and display an anti-ACTA message.

Allegro, the Polish equivalent of Ebay, placed an “anti-ACTA” banner next to the company's logo. The list of the websites taking part in the protest is available here.

The opposition party, the Democratic Left Alliance, also said the government should not sign the agreement and blacked out its website [pl] in solidarity.

While the global media, with a few exceptions, keep silent about the Polish protest, national information services race to publish dozens of opinions, analyses and the latest reports on the ACTA case. In the meantime, the protest movement seems to be getting bigger and bigger: the anti-ACTA protest event on Facebook Nie dla ACTA has reached over 400,000 fans.

A real-life protest in Warsaw gathered [pl] over 1,000 people on Tuesday, and another one is being planned for Wednesday, January 25.

"Screw corporations, long live the people": many Polish protesters went on the streets on January 24. Photo by Alexey Sidorenko, used with permission.

Vagla, a popular Polish digital rights blogger, shared this hope [pl] on Twitter on January 24:

I guess that slowly people start to understand that this is not a discussion about “piracy” and “thieves” but about the direction in which our civilisation is heading.

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On January 19, 2012, during a meeting with NGOs and business representatives, the Polish government announced [pl] that it would sign the controversial anti-piracy agreement ACTA on January 26. While the governement calls it a success [pl] of the Polish EU Presidency, netizens are outraged with the arbitrary decision and are calling to take action against the proposal.

ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, is a proposed plurilateral agreement for the purpose of establishing international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement. According to La Quadrature du Net and other globally active digital rights organisations, such as Electronic Frontier Foundation or European Digital Rights, ACTA would impose new criminal sanctions forcing Internet actors to monitor and censor online communications. Creating legal uncertainty for Internet companies, ACTA would become a major threat to freedom of expression online and another assault against the culture of sharing on the Internet.

Image by flickr user PateandoPiedrasweb under the CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence.

The decision of the Polish government [pdf, pl] to sign the “European SOPA” worries [pl] blogger Maciej Gajewski from the tech website Spiderweb.pl:

Lately, one talks a lot about SOPA and PIPA bills and this is very good: in my opinion, these are the reprehensible bills and I think that the goal should never justify the means. For the Polish netizens the consequences of these two bills are negligible. If they were adopted, they would concern us only regarding the possibility to block our website for people in the USA. And that's actually it. But meanwhile, just in one week, our country, as a country subordinated to the European Union, will join the ACTA agreement. And this can hurt us. Very much.

An agreement negotiated behind the people's backs

But it's not only the content of the agreement proposal that upsets the netizens. The very secret character of the international ACTA negotiations and a stunning lack of public consultations and transparency in the negotiating process are clearly pointing to a democracy failure, according to [pl] Antyweb, a popular Polish tech-blogger:

They promised debates – nothing. They promised openness – nothing. Democracy is being destroyed, the deputies don't know what they are signing, and all this will lead to a situation when bloggers, scientists and entrepreneurs will be qualified as criminals. And if not, they will anyway walk on thin ice, paying attention not to step on a patent spot with an additinal R letter in a circle on the right side.

The digital rights blog Prawo.vagla.pl criticises [pl] the scandalous ignorance of the Polish government:

We found out that, of course, it's no longer possible to withdraw the decision about the signature of a Polish representative on the ACTA document, that this signature will be put and it will open the way to the ratification procedure. I asked the representatives of these ministries if they had any plan in case the European or the Polish Parliament would not not agree to the ratification. I heard that “it would put us to shame.” I wonder what is a bigger shame, and if it's not maybe the way of working on this kind of an international agreement where the public opinion couldn't get the public information it deserves.

In reaction to the netizens’ protest, the Polish Minister of Administration and Digitalisation, Michal Boni [pl], asked [pl] the PM Donald Tusk to re-discuss the agreement before signing it. The meeting [pl] will take place on January 24.

ACTA has to be stopped

In the meantime the Polish Internet is fuming with anger. Facebook pages, such as Poland against ACTA & SOPA and NIE dla ACTA w Polsce, spring up like mushrooms and gather hundreds of thousands of netizens around the protest. On the wall of the Facebook event Nie dla ACTA, Rafal Mirski writes [pl]:

I am in favor of intellectual property protection but not with these methods! This is throwing the baby out with the bath water. You can't allow to subordinate the whole Internet to any group of interest. ACTA is forcing Internet providers to censorship! And it is in fact puzzling how fast, without any public debate, one tries to dictate some solutions. We definitely have to stop it!

Maciej Gajewski from Spiderweb doesn't like [pl] the perspective of being monitored all the time:

First of all: although I don't share anything illegal on the net, I don't feel comfortable knowing that somebody is registering my every step on the Internet. Even if it's an automatic machine. Secondly, these will cause huge costs for the providers. Our activity has to be monitored and archived. Let's prepare for a big raise of Internet prices.

Polish digital rights organisations sent an appeal [pdf, pl] to the PM, drawing his attention to the risks of ACTA. On Wykop, a Polish version of Digg, user katius posted a protest letter [pl] to the Members of the Parliament, encouraging other users to address their representatives with the issue. A series of live protest events [pl] in the biggest Polish cities are planned to take place.

A Polish blackout?

Encouraged by the SOPA/PIPA protest success in the United States, blogger Antyweb calls on his blog [pl] for a Polish blackout:

We have to arrange a specific date (pretty fast) and switch off in the Polish web whatever we can while displaying information about ACTA and about damaging democracy. We need to draw peoples’ attention to the fact that this is not the way to take decisions in a modern democratic state. Americans could make it, Poles can do it as well – especially the “internet”-ones. What about Monday, [January 23]? But which of the Polish websites will give up money in the name of defending democracy and free Internet?

Also, the Polish Wikipedia community is considering a blackout [pl] and is in the process of editing an anti-ACTA manifest [pl].

Last hope: European Parliament's veto right

The whole situation looks a bit less dramatic once we consider that the Polish signature alone doesn't change anything yet. The agreement needs to be ratified by the European Parliament. Antyweb writes [pl]:

If we want to fight ACTA, then we need to do it on the European Parliament level – it is there where ACTA will have its “to be or not to be.” The EP can dismiss ACTA completely and then the bill lands in trash. Amen. But it doesn't change the fact that it is worthy to take action on January 26.

As promising as it sounds, isn't it quite dissapointing that instead of counting on one's own government to protect civil and digital rights of its citizens, one has to rely on the reason of EU politicians? Twitter user @PrzemoBrozek sums it up [pl]:

On January 26 Poland will sign ACTA. According to the agreement, Internet providers will have to monitor all users’ activities. 1984 MODE ON.

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On October 9, 2011, the results of Poland's parliamentiary election seemed to be a relief to many and a surprise to everybody. The current Prime Minister (PM) Donald Tusk has become the first Polish prime minister since 1989 to be elected to a consecutive term, but the real dark horse of the election is the anticlerical and libertarian Janusz Palikot, whose party has gained 10 percent of the votes.

With 39 percent of the votes, the centre-right Civic Platform won over the biggest opposition party, the national-conservative Law and Justice, which took 30 percent of the votes. Its leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski commented on the election outcome, saying that “the day will come when Warsaw will be like Budapest,” referring to [pl] the current Hungarian conservative PM Victor Orban.

Donald Tusk is the first Polish leader to be re-elected in a consecutive term. Photo by Flickr user PlatformaRP (CC BY-ND 2.0)

One election, two winners

The biggest surprise, however, was the result of the party “Ruch Palikota” (“Palikot's Movement”), which became the third power in the parliament, even though it was registered only four months ago by a philisophy graduate and entrepreneur Janusz Palikot. In his time as a member of the Civic Platform, Palikot was branded as a political clown and provocateur. His eccentric ways once showed during the infamous press conference, at which he waved a toy gun and a vibrator [pl] in order to draw attention to the case of a young woman who had been sexually abused at a police station. Another time, he brought a bleeding pig's head [pl] to a TV show, calling it a “mafia gift.”

Now, just a few years later, Palikot is not afraid to campaign for sensitive subjects, such as a secular state, civil unions for gay men and lesbians, legalisation of abortion and a more liberal drug policy. With this programme [pdf, pl], he has won the hearts of many young people across the country, especially those who felt that their demands weren't represented by any other party on the political scene.

Twitter user @szwalowski commented [pl] on October 9:

The voice of Palikot is an expression of the same emotions that make people in Madrid or Tel Aviv go to the streets #wyborcza | Not really #wybory [election]

The same day another Twitter user @pawelbielecki tried to find [pl] the reason for Palikot's succes somewhere else:

Was it a good PR or maybe the voters’ disgust with the Polish political scene that translated into such a good result for Palikot's Movement #wybory

Mateusz Drulis wrote [pl] on the Movement's Facebook wall:

I hope that I will live till these beautiful times when politicians understand that it's no longer about ignoring just one man, Janusz Palikot, but also 1.5 million young Poles who support him and his postulates.

A billboard from the press kit on the movement

Young people consider Palikot much more honest than other politicians and feel attracted to his anticlerical courage. A phrase by a TV journalist about the Generation JPII (Pope John Paul II) facing the Generation JP (Janusz Palikot) seemed to hit the point [pl].

Palikot’s party has also won [pl] in the primary election organized among high school students. Nearly 36 percent of the future voters were in favour of his party. Dave Schiemann commented [pl] on it on the Facebook wall of Palikot’s movement on October 14:

I saw this coming. At a certain age, people already have their opinions formed and they won't change it. In addition, they are not that open for other things as young people are. Palikot's Movement is the party of the future, these 10% of support is just a beginning! Or at least I hope so :)

Blogger Nocri considers [pl] Palikot’s success as a sign of a clear need for change in the Polish society:

He became a new and interesting figure on the Polish political scene. The last election proved that there was a need for changes in the political system that has been manipulating us for 20 years already. He [Palikot] became a symbol of embarassment but also of courageous decisions. He became a symbol among young people – it's him who has won most of the votes among the electorate that all the parties were fighting for.

On Twitter on Oct. 9, @pawel_meteo noted [pl] that Palikot's success was a result of a populist game, comparing the politician and his postulate to legalize marijuana to another populist from the past, Andrzej Lepper.

Civil rights activists move into Parliament

Thanks to Palikot's success, the first transsexual MP Anna Grodzka will enter the parliament, as well the first openly homosexual politician Robert Biedron and a feminist activist Wanda Nowicka [pl]. Just before the election day, the future MP Anna Grodzka stressed [pl] on her blog how much the campaign has changed her life:

During this campaign and during last years I've received so much good from people, I've received so much help and support from many friends that I haven't experienced in all my life. We fight together for a modern and just Poland. For Poland of different but equal people, for our good place on earth.

Tomasz Terlikowski, a Polish conservative journalist and a Catholic activist, reacted on his portal in a post [pl] titled “We go to war”:

[...] The Poles have made the third political power in Poland [...] a man whose only merits are shameless attacks against the church, and his people include a guy who calls himself a woman, a woman who made a career on preaching about killing children and a man whose only merit is that he likes other men.

Whatever one may say about Poland's new politial reality, one thing is certain – the election has revealed a profound change that the Polish society has undergone in the past years. A change that all the parties except for Palikot's Movement have ignored. Will Palikot fight for the postulates that have brought him this impressive approval from the young Poles – or will he dissapoint his voters?

Tomek Alfik Frontczak expressed [pl] his hope with a happy post on the Movement's Facebook wall on October 10:

Thank you, Janusz! It's super great! Poland finally has a chance for a modern country, I sincerely thank you. I hope you won't dissapoint these Poles who supported your movement. I don't find words to describe our happiness. Take care and good luck!!!

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For the past two months, a Facebook initiative called “Appeal to parliamentarians” [pl], with more than 60,000 fans, has been crowdsourcing ideas to improve Polish legislation. Ahead of the upcoming October 9, 2011, parliamentary elections, the organizers presented ideas to political parties and promised to endorse those who would support the most popular of the netizens’ proposals.

The initiative arose from a campaign that the same group of people had started in order to change one of the most restrictive drug laws in the European Union; this has a proper videospot [pl], a celebrity as the campaign face and in the end over 60,000 Facebook fans who do not agree with the perspective of going to jail for three years for smoking one joint.

Eventually, the Polish Parliament adopted the new drug law [pl] and the Facebook initiative celebrated this as its victory, although many netizens described the amendment as irrelevant.

More than 63,000 netizens gathered on Facebook to express their ideas on how to improve the Polish legislation. Image courtesy of the "Appeal to Parliamentarians" organizers.

On the group's Facebook wall, one the the followers, Alex Raczynski, criticized the achievement but noted the relevance of the change as such on May 26:

Born in pain, incomplete, lousy, not changing much. But anyway the content of the articles doesn’t really matter here. What is important is the fact that old parliamentarian geezers bended under the pressure of society. Bravo my dears. Very slowly but consequently we head towards a civil society.

Encouraged by the success of the campaign, the organizers decided to widen their horizons and transform the campaign into a tool for young people to put pressure on politicians. Especially in the context of the upcoming parliamentary election.

They wrote on their Facebook wall:

Just think: which party would ignore at least tens of thousands of potential votes? Let’s invite friends, let’s get media attention and let’s put pressure on the politicias. Maybe they will finally start to listen to us?

“To the blackboard!”

A new campaign and videospot, posted on Sep. 15 by Apelujemy on Vimeo, encouraged Polish netizens to post their ideas in the Facebook group:

In the press release, the organizers stress their political neutrality and describe the action as the voice of young people who feel ignored or betrayed by political parties.

Michal Juda, one of the organizers, says [pl]:

The election is approaching and we don’t have anybody to vote for. We are reading the parties’ agendas and we can’t find anything that really interests us. That’s why we have created this initiative, “To the blackboard!”. With the help of Facebook, we want to engage young people and create our own list of postulates. Then we'll show them to the politicians [running in the upcoming election] and ask for their positions on each one of them.

The new project elicited different responses among the fans of the group. On July 15, Pan Kapica encouraged [pl] the organizers to continue with the citizen initiative:

I will support every, even the smallest change of the Polish “anti-drug” law. Appeal to the parliamentarians has become a very strong, concrete citizen initiative – and Poland needs this. If we have achieved something like this, why not go further?

Damazy Podsiadło stressed the importance [pl] of the initiative but was sceptical about its actual impact:

The idea is good, it’s good to remind our deputies that they are representatives chosen by citizens in order to act in the people’s best interest. The mandate to govern comes from us (theoretically, but, more importantly, also legally), so we have the right to do such actions and we should organize them. I personally think that the parliamentarians are so cynical by now that they forgot it. So – it’s good that we have such initiatives but I still have doubts if we are really going to manage to achieve anything in the long term with their help only.

Kamil Fikou expressed [pl] the same concern in a more pointed way on the group's Facebook wall on August 8:

Cool that this initiative is taking place, but the truth is that the government doesn’t give a shit about it.

Iza Forys supported [pl] the initiative on July 17:

I’m for many changes in the Polish law because this country is impossible to live in. And it’s enough to take a short look at other countries to see a diametric difference (and to be perfectly clear, I’m not talking only about the marijuana case). Everyday probably each one of us faces lots of absurdities and we all just shut our eyes to it, one has to function somehow in these conditions. But the question is – do we really have to or is it just because we are lazy? I will support every initiative that unifies people and tries to change something.

El Ogurro doesn’t believe [pl] in the power of Internet activism and pleads for real actions:

Or maybe it’s time to realize that the world isn’t changing on Facebook but on the streets with a Molotov in the hand.

And Sebastian Chmura complained about slacktivism:

It’s easy to click on “like” – but then nobody wants to go to vote

Despite scepticism, once the Facebook “blackboard” opened, thousands of people have answered questions and posted ideas about changes in the Polish legislation. The postulates touched upon such topics as employment, family politics and relations with church, and caused many discussions. One of the biggest concerns of the young people remained the drug law – thousands of netizens postulated decriminalisation of marijuana.

The action has received some media coverage [pl], but – more importantly – also some actual reactions from politicians who answered netizens’ questions in short video recordings [pl], available on YouTube (here, here, here and here). The peak of the campaign was the debate [pl] at the University of Warsaw with representatives of most political parties. Among these major parties the only party missing was the national-conservative party Law and Justice, led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

On Sunday, October 9, the Polish election day, young netizens can decide who has passed the test and answered the “blackboard” questions correctly – and who has failed their expectations. Is this online debate a beginning of a new quality in the political culture in Poland? Alex Raczynski is optimistic in his September 20 post:

I’m full of hope for a genuine bottom-up citizen debate about real things. Just look at what we’ve achieved starting with the drugs politics. [...]

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While placing the majority of the blame on the Polish pilot's error, the report also pointed to defective lighting at Smolensk airport and Russian air controllers, who misinformed the crew about the altitude. Poland's Defence Minister Bogdan Klich stepped down [pl] in the wake of the report.

The Polish president and his wife, together with many leading political and military officials, were on their way to a memorial for the victims of the Katyn massacre when their plane crashed as it was trying to land in heavy fog on April 10, 2010.

The Russian report [.pdf], released in January, placed the full blame on Poland, which caused many controversies in the Polish political and civic circles. Back then Poland, while accepting some of the fundamental findings, said [pl] that the report was “incomplete” and started its own investigation. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the conservative opposition party PiS and the twin brother of Lech Kaczynski, had previously accused Prime Minister Donald Tusk‘s government of being soft on Russia [pl]. Now, after the Polish report, Kaczynski critised Tusk [pl] again, saying Tusk didn't have the courage and honour to take responsibility for the crash and tried to shift the fault to his helpers.

Smolensk report caused many controversies among netizens. Photo by Flickr user bylemwidzialem (CC BY-NC 2.0).

The report has generated an avalanche of various opinions not only in the international press [pl], but also in the Polish blogosphere. Bloggers were focusing both on the report's conclusions about the fatal condition [pl] of the Polish air forces and the difficult relations with Russia.

Blogger Lukasz Foltyn thinks [pl] that the investigators – the so-called Miller's commission [pl] – were trying to find a diplomatic way out of the uncomfortable situation:

Miller's report gives the major blame for the catastrophe in Smolensk to the pilots and therefore to the military training system. And that's how Miller's commision found the “Solomon's solution” for who to blame in order not to blame the government on the one hand and not to charge Russia on the other, so the relation with this country won't be demaged as the current coalition wants to improve it…

Maia14 is positively surprised [pl] that the report doesn't give the blame to the president and the psychological pressure he might have applied on the pilots:

Yesterday the report was presented [...]. A lot of deficiencies on the Polish and Russian sides were pointed out. Briefly: the eternal Polish improvisation overlapped with the Russian mess. In my opinion the report is reliable and identifies the most important issues [...]. What is surprising – I have the impression that especially for the opposition – is that the report doesn't talk about blaming the then head of the state, about applying pressure on the aircraft's crew. On the contrary, it remarks that it was the crew indeed who – from the beginning to the end – made all the decisions and the main passenger let them decide freely what to do.

Kajetan Skalski writes this in his post titled “Trash, mess and recklessness”:

This situation [mess] is one of the costs of populism, which is the cost of democracy. You can find it everywhere, but in our country it is excesivelly high [...]. It is little comfort that the Russians are even worse. Trash, mess, recklessness. The boorishness of the Russian report consisted of omitting the Russian share of responsibility for the crash. In the [Polish] Miller's report, it is included.

On her blog mojapolskadomowa, the blogger is indignant [pl] at the opposition's critics about the report:

Well, first they demanded the truth, now they talk about honour, and actually it is all about resignation of Donald Tusk from the PM post. I don't understand this position. Does the one and only truth always have to give evidence that the Poles are always right, don't make any mistakes and are always innocent? [...] Let's be proud of the best that we have, but let's be able to admit our own mistakes. Avoiding the truth to defend honour is pathetic. In this very case it is less important that we win over Russia. It's not going to make a superpower out of us. What is much more important is to learn from our own failures and to make conclusions that will protect us from making the same mistakes in the future.

Further, the blogger complains [pl] about the surfeit of the Smolensk topic in the media:

Actually, I feel tired of this topic. For the past 15 months, PiS [the opposition party] has been playing the Smolensk card so much that it led to a total surfeit. [...] To inflame emotions, they will surely expose the pictures of Maria and Lech Kaczynski or other killed politicians of this party many more times. The Smolensk fraction in PiS will have its five media minutes.

Indeed, the oppositon party released a very emotional election campaign spot with the presidential couple, titled “They are waiting for the truth”, uploaded on YouTube on July 29, 2011, by gazetapl [pl]:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyOX7VB7aVM'[/p]

A blogger going by the name niekatolik is outraged [pl] about the spot and calls it “scandalous”:

Of course, it is a contestation of the report's authenticity. In the spot it is said that Lech and Maria Kaczynski were living in a world of betrayal, among people without honour, people taking care of their own interests only. For me it is scandalous to lie through one's teeth like this, to use the death of the nearest persons for political games, to use the emotions of ordinary people. This is disgusting!

According to a survey [pl] ordered by the television channel TVN24, 24 percent of the Poles think that the report explains unambiguously the reasons of the Smolensk catastrophe, while 49 percent still think that the reasons remain unclear.

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Some 600,000 people have signed a petition in support of the draft amendment [pl, pdf] to Poland's abortion law intending to ban abortion in Poland without exceptions – even when the life of a woman is threatened. On July 1, 2011, against a motion of the Democratic Left Alliance Party to dismiss the proposal after the first reading, the Polish Parliament (the Sejm) voted in favour of the draft and passed it to further discussion in the parliamentary committee.

Currently, Poland has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, a result of a compromise between political parties. According to the current legislation, abortion is banned except under the following three circumstances: when a woman's life or health is endangered; when pregnancy is the result of a criminal act; or when the fetus is seriously malformed. Pregnant women are not subject to penalty, but everyone else involved is: this might be a doctor who carried out the abortion, or a person who persuaded the woman to abort.

The draft amendment was submitted by the Citizen Legislative Committee created by PRO–Right to Life Foundation [pl]. It is officially supported by the clergy [pl] and has caused many protests. According to a a survey [pl] ordered by PRO–Right to Life Foundation, 65 percent of the Poles are for protecting life from the moment of conception.

On Facebook [pl], PRO-Right to Life Foundation's page states:

We believe that abortion is a murder committed on an innocent person. We believe that at this moment the phenomenon takes features of a genocide. We believe that abortion in a civilised world is a scandal. That it why we take action.

Some 600,000 Poles have signed a petition in support of the draft amendment to ban abortion without exceptions. Photo by Flickr user bartheq (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

The proposal created a lot of controversies among Polish netizens. A male blogger going by the name Feminista007 is outraged [pl]:

What is scandalous about this debate is that one totally omits women and nobody from the “defenders” [of life] speaks a word about their lives. Many women in Poland died only because of bad medical treatment (or not being treated at all), because the doctors had a sensible conscience. This conscience often doesn't work in a private consulting room. The only thing that works there are market rules. The draft amendment won't protect life, it may only cause death of many women and strengthen the underground abortion business. [...] One of the arguments of the initiative's supporters is that the project has indeed been signed by many people, around 500,000. But I would say that even if they had collected 25 million citizens’ signatures, non of these persons would have had a moral right to tell a woman whose life is in danger what she is supposed to do, regardless of whether he wears a cassock, trousers or a skirt.

On June 29, a Polish ethics professor and feminist Magdalena Środa wrote this [pl] on the Polish microblogging platform Blip:

I’m glad that this anti-feminine trash landed in the Parliament. It will start a debate about liberalization of the abortion law.

Środa also linked to a newspaper interview [pl], in which she claimed that many persons who have signed the petition were not really conscious of what they were doing:

I think that if they found themselves in a situation of rape, unwanted pregnancy or a choice between their own health and the life of their child or if it was their child who was pregnant, they would decide to abort.

Tomasz Terlikowski, a conservative Polish journalist and philosopher, defends [pl] the initiative on his blog:

There can be no compromise that leads to killing people. In 2009, it was 549 persons, and from one year to another the amount of the killed is rising. We have to ask ourselves what is more important – human life or compromise? The killed ones or peace and quiet?

Many bloggers, as well as the mainstream media, discussed the issue as a natural part of the upcoming 2011 election campaign.

Feminista007 criticised [pl] the governing party Civic Platform, many of whose members didn’t show up for the voting and those who did – surprisingly many – voted in favor of the draft:

A huge, huge mistake! Not so long ago PM Donald Tusk declared that the Civic Platform would not kneel before a priest. You can't kneel if you're lying with your face on the ground! It is a pathological situation indeed when members of the parliament quail before the episcopate. Somehow it is understandable, because the election is coming up and, as always, the apolitical church will not point to the candidates but will pronounce for values. A question emerges: who is governing Poland?

While many voices focus on the excessive influence of the church in the debate, reakcjonistka argues [pl] on her blog:

Today nobody wants to have discussions with abortion opponents. It is enough to associate their beliefs with Catholic religion and here you go, you can reject their demands without any problems. [...] Even if at the source of the opposition to abortion there is the Catholic worldview, that doesn't mean that there are no arguments behind it.

In the context of the debate, a number of feminist online portals, such as www.seksulanosc-kobiet.pl [pl], drew attention to a 2009 documentary called ‘Underground Women's State’ [pl]. On the website and in the movie, the authors are trying to show the helplessness of the Polish pro-choice movement in the face of political bargains. The film features activists of the movement, from different generations, as well as eight women who had had illegal abortions and were talking about their experiences for the first time.

According to the description on YouTube, no distributor has risked buying and introducing the documentary to cinemas and no public or commercial television station aired it. Below you can watch a teaser, uploaded on YouTube by EntuzjastkiGF [pl] on September 17, 2009, with the English subtitles. (You can watch the entire movie, in Polish, on YouTube, here.)

The Democratic Left Alliance Party decided to use the debate to emphasize their own perspective. On July 4, they presented [pl] a bill to liberalize the abortion law. The party wants to introduce refundable legal abortion till the 12th week of pregnancy, funding for contraceptives and sexual education in schools. Rbik53 concluded [pl]:

…What a pity that the election campaign passes so quickly…

This post is part of our special coverage Global Development 2011.

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