"We look in the face [...] the worst of all - the face of betrayal"

 

"We look in the face [...] the worst of all - the face of betrayal"

Too old to carry arms and fight like the others –

they graciously gave me the inferior role of chronicler
I record – I don’t know for whom – the history of the siege

I am supposed to be exact but I don’t know when the invasion began
two hundred years ago in December in September perhaps yesterday at dawn
everyone here suffers from a loss of the sense of time

Zbigniew Herbert 
“Report from the Besieged City”

When we’re singing the national anthem at a legal protest in Warsaw on October 24, 2020, we are attacked with clubs and gas - we are suffocating, tears are running down from our eyes, some of us stagger or fall over. You can hear women squeal and children cry. Helpless cry for help. Escape routes are blocked. We’ve been attacked by… the police.

It is a symbolic end to an era in Poland. The epoch of a defective, party-oriented, inaccessible to the unformatted, but still an epoch of democracy. Martial law’s begun - the war between the rulers and their own people. Time of totalitarianism.

This is shocking for us. We’re protesting against – under the pretext of fighting the so-called pandemic – successive depriving us from more and more constitutional rights, jobs and livelihoods. We want to make everyone remember about our right to self-constituting. And there, among others, just the previous night, the parliament’s passed the law on compulsory vaccinations for all - without public consultation. And the government has even placed an order for 40 million units. Without our consent. Breaking our constitutional law. And announcing breaking further laws.

We are in Warsaw in a square called Plac Defilad . We can see there a stage legally set up. People of all ages, young, middle, old and families with children are slowly gathering in this vast place. Although many of us know that there is no sanitary risk, the months of training do the job – we’re trying to keep the recommended so-called social distance. The hundreds of groups of police officers, also gathering here, seem disturbing. And they are no longer nice gentlemen and ladies in forage caps, willing to discuss, but, instead, well-organized formations, in professional helmets with shields, battle sticks and gas throwers. Of course, they do not keep their social distance. They surround us imperceptibly. There is also a chain of police cars tightly placed next to each other around the square. This worries us. But - we think - we are here legally. We think that this is just a presentation of power as in previous months during similar meetings.

The MPs have arrived on stage, including Grzegorz Braun and Janusz Korwin Mikke. The famous Justyna Socha’s arriving. Medical experts from Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and even the USA. They’re quoting the data, the numbers of the sick, hospitalized and deaths in their countries for the last year. They compare them with the previous years. Their message has a common denominator and one conclusion can be drawn from them: we are not dealing with a pandemic. The one is contradicted by the numbers. Observation of reality. We are dealing with a global falsehood unleashed by the orchestrated media.

 

Therefore, under the pretext of a pandemic, our freedoms are being taken away, and our national economies are being demolished. Millions of people are left without jobs and livelihoods. The guests invited to Warsaw share the reports of their colleagues from many foreign isolation hospitals, there are also reports from Polish ones - despite the cassandran news, the media dragging out and dramatizing annual numbers of cases of sick, hospitals have been empty for many months.

So what's all this for? Is it a global dictatorship under the pretext of fighting the "plague" materializing in front of our eyes? And the whole narrative - as the doctor from the Netherlands argued - is conceived on the number of supposedly "infected" people, that is, people tested with unreliable tests.

Anyway, as noted not only by her - the number of the so-called infected is only related to the number of tests performed, and has no relation to the number of the patients and deaths. Nothing. This can be checked in the reports of the Central Statistical Office, Ministry of Digitization, Sanepid sanitary unit, Ministry of Health and personal observations. Only a few scared and simply fools or those who are beneficiaries of the changes will stigmatize with the term of supporters of "conspiracy theories" those who dare to analyze the reality.

However, many have already seen in their pockets how inflation is accelerating. Many have already seen more and more cases of deaths of family members and friends for whom - under the pretext of fighting the pandemic - the health service was denied. Now, as in the Middle Ages - a minor accident can mean death. About two weeks ago, our nearly 40-year-old friend, who was passed on from one door to another also closed door of the health service, died of appendicitis. Every day we hear - informally - about the increasing number of people who ended their lives in similar circumstances. Including children who, for example, fell off the swings and smashed their heads. Nowadays, before the operation, they had to first wait for the test results, often to no avail.

Just yesterday I spoke with a friend from Australia - who says that for four months the authorities have locked them up, and for a Facebook entry stating that there is no pandemic, you can be arrested by the police, fined with an extremely high amount, which may ruin "the accused" financially. He says, "I'm already half mad and broken. I do not understand this. What are they doing this for? Are they testing us, and what is it for? Within a few months, we have human rights reduced to the level of third world countries instead of our former freedom". But despite this narrative being carved into his head with fines and clubs - his message is consistent with the experts speaking in Warsaw - he has not observed in his neighbourhood a greater than the regular annual number of the sick, hospitalized and deaths. The same is claimed by friends from the UK, Germany and Italy. One in Ireland says the Irish are smart - they pretend to the world that they are "fighting a pandemic", but if you don’t want to cover your face, the police aren't persecuting anyone for not having a mask, and neither are those who wear them. They invented a lockpick so that you can go to work as usual, e.g. they issue passes locally. The Irish were oppressed by the British Empire for so many centuries - that they learned the "underground" methods of survival. Solidarity. And because they are monocultural, it is difficult to make them argue.

Let's come back to Warsaw. The whole meeting is being broadcast live over the Internet. Suddenly someone says, "there’s no internet", the communication’s broken. Some, already knowing what it could mean ... hurry away. When we’re singing the national anthem at this legal protest, we are suddenly attacked with clubs and gas - we are suffocating, tears are running down from our eyes, some of us stagger or fall over. You can hear women squeal and children cry. Helpless cry for help. Escape routes are blocked. We’ve been attacked by… the police.

Today a police spokesman says they attacked us for throwing sandwiches and bottles at them. I suddenly missed the communist journalist Urban for his "smarter" lies. By the way, when I travel, I eat bananas and drink water from a plastic bottle like most who drink. The spokesman also said that the demonstrators were shouting obscene words in the context of the ruling party. I researched the biographies of Home Army soldiers, one of them, the father of my friend, writer Jan Krzysztofczyk, was imprisoned for "slandering [ the post-war] government". Yes. Obscene words are a particularly dangerous crime.

A dense row behind plastic armor pushes us with shields towards the stage, to the wall, to the  police cars! They block our escape routes. We are packed like sardines. In the trap. Terror prevails! I can see that if someone falls right now, it will be impossible not to trample him and it will all end up as a tragedy ... I'm lucky, I manage to avoid it. I stop, there is no one left behind me, I turn to see a young boy in a police uniform laughing mockingly. SOMEONE formatted it! SOMEONE has already told him to see me as his enemy!

From the stage, the members of the parliament are calling to the police commanders to stop these attacks. In response, we now can hear from the police megaphone that "the congregation is illegal!" Alas ... even the announcements that we, pressed against the walls and police cars – have broken the social distance. But even if someone wanted to leave this place, they couldn’t. They blocked us. And they shout: "Get out!". Now the police row moved to the very stage and, without respecting the foreign guests and MPs present there, also released a corrosive and choking gas. Someone can't stand it. The attacked falls. His mouth is foaming! Convulsions shake his body. (One can only see it for a fraction of a second, we're being attacked and pushed over and over again.) Fifteen times from the scene, Mr Braun has asked the policemen to release paramedics through this police blockade. And only the last one is effective. But after the action of the rescuers the line starts moving again. A determined crowd of crushed people pushes the policemen blocking a less-than-a-meter gap between the police cars. And I run away through it. We’re coughing, choked.

In the vicinity of the Palace of Culture and Science, I can see a police formation running around, but ... also tourists. Police officers keep re-forming. They are trying to catch up with a group of several dozen fast-legged young boys with Polish flags in their hands. Drones’re flying overhead. These guys are not easy to catch, to press them against the wall. I hear from someone that they are football fans who came to our aid. On their way, police formations will knock over and hit an accidental cyclist. And they will throw against the concrete a young girl who screamed earlier, " What are you doing? Are you still Poles? ”. And when they flattened her on this concrete and choked her - between one breath and another, from her throat there came out a choked "fucking Gestapo!" The arrests are ongoing. There are also the injured from club blows.

But this is not the end, I can see that two armoured water-cannon trucks approaching the legal protest. I thought that the last time I saw such was during the martial law under the so-called commune rule. And that wasn't the last association of this sort yesterday.

Suddenly, me and my wife, and one quite random boy standing next to us - were surrounded by a police squad. They say their names quickly and quietly. They refuse to repeat them. I’m given a piece of paper to read out my "charges". I'm accused of attending an illegal gathering. We wonder why we were "selected", from these dozens of other people walking nearby. Aga, my wife, discovers the reason for the intervention - we are carrying tiny white and red flags with us. It is those who possess something similar that are being prosecuted. We are made to show our IDs. We have to plead guilty. We do not. They note down our personal info, check it (via the Internet), propose to accept a fine. They are young boys. We are not aggressive towards them, we conduct a compassionate dialogue. But we stick to our truth - we have not committed an offense or a crime. I can see that these boys are fooled - the one who took my ID me is a well-built  tall boy who turned red on cheeks. The police-girl is basically silent, she tries to be "tough", but it doesn't work. They were sent here from some small town, they are stunned, they would rather leave here. The officer inspecting my wife's is trying to stand, but his arguments are pathetic. You can see that they are lost, surprised, they do not know what is going on, why they are told to persecute other people. And perhaps they would have left us alone - but the "punishment" is demanded by the sergeant, forty or so, in charge of them. We have not accepted the fines. The case will go to court.

The last time I was arrested for "illegal gathering" was under martial law in the 1980s. I was a skinny teenager then, but I had "dynamite" in my legs and at one point I broke out of the police blockade, I was hit in the back by one blow of a club, but they did not catch up with me. Today I am still a thin man, but already a man getting on, I have cruciate ligaments torn and I can barely stand - but if I had the legs of my youth again, today I would not run away. I promised myself that I would never run away from anyone again. And I advise this to everyone - don't run away! Do not run away as you see lawlessness!

I still stand close enough to the police officers who "punished" us to I hear them arguing. The young one wearing glasses, almost crying, said to the sergeant, “What did we punish them for? After all, you recently said that in such cases we do not have such grounds? So, what for?” Sergeant firmly, "Because now I told you." These young people have thus smashed a coherent world of law based on Latin civilization, a world of one ethics. And they will either quit the service or follow the sergeant's path, the path of the truth of the stage, the path of double ethics that denies understanding amongst humans. A road that breeds totalitarianism - because in order to dominate a nation it only needs to make it divided.

But I believe they can't do it. Yesterday I met a lady with two small children, very similar to their mother, but with darker skin (as it turned out their dad was from India). Her husband was stuck for several months due to a "pandemic" outside Poland. Despite this, this lady travelled over 400 km with two little ones to take part in the protest. And her children were holding a trumpet in red and white colors.

 

I can still smell the acrid stench of gas on my clothes. My head hurts and my lungs are choking. This attack, while we were singing the anthem, is a symbolic end to an era in Poland. An epoch of a defective, party-oriented, inaccessible to the unformatted, but still democracy. Martial law’s begun. Totalitarianism. The communist rule has never ended - it only took on its modern Trotskyist face. We are no longer ruled by gensenks, but by officials trained in shark-like banks. They are even more dangerous, although they are only tools, only following orders. But from the philosopher Hannah Arendt, we know that those are especially dangerous.

Now, as the poet wrote: "we are looking at the worst of all - the face of betrayal", and soon will at "the face of hunger, the face of fire, the face of death." The war with the nation has become a fact.

 

Krzysztof Sowiński