Dear Madam Minister,
The Helsinki Committee in Poland has always counteracted the impunity of public servants. Personal immunity does not serve the purpose of guaranteeing the impunity of the members of the Polish parliament, but instead it is meant to protect the freedom of parliamentary debate.
If the debate was to assume unparliamentary forms, there are means, other than criminal prosecution, that allow the restoration of order among the members of the parliament. The continuos practice of the European Court of Human Rights is to declare that it is forbidden to use penal law to shape public debate, whereas interference in the freedom of speech of a politician, who is a member of the opposition party, should be handled with the greatest of caution.
With this in mind, and critically judging the public activity of parliamentary member A. Lepper, the Helsinki Committee has doubts, whether the precedent of repealing someone’s immunity in order to allow the public prosecutor’s office to prosecute him for the statements made during a parliamentary debate, will be of great service to the strengthening of democracy in Poland, and whether it will have a positive influence on the improvement of political moral standards.
Such doubts would cease to exist in the case of prosecuting a parliamentary member, e.g. for preventing the execution of a legally binding court sentence, illegal roadblocks, etc.
With authorisation and on behalf of the members of the Helsinki Committee: Halina Bortnowska – D¹browska, Teresa Bogucka, Zbigniew Ho³da, Jacek Kurczewski, Wojciech Maziarski, Micha³ Nawrocki, Marek Nowicki, Andrzej Paczkowski, Danuta Przywara, Andrzej Rzepliński, Stefan Starczewski,
With regards,
Marek Nowicki
see also: Helsinki Committee in Poland, members of the Helsinki Committee in Poland, the Helsinki Committee’s Declarations