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  • Poland Enacts New National Minorities Law, Report Views Minority #s

    Poland Enacts New National Minorities Law, Report Views Minority
    Numbers Warsaw Polityka in Polish 30 Apr 05 pp 28-31

    [Report by Jan Dziadul: "Republic of the Nine Nations" -- first
    paragraph published in boldface]

    On 1 May, Poland's national minorities will receive their own
    constitution: the "Act on National and Ethnic Minorities and on the
    Regional Language." It confirms nationality-based privileges,
    introduces new ones, and will soothe many flashpoints. But it will
    also ignite new ones?since it overlooks the aspirations of the
    Silesians and Kashubians.

    The Silesians have promised to put up a tough fight for their
    rights, this time in Brussels. The Kashubians believe that they do
    form a nation, and will argue painstakingly in favor of being treated
    like a minority. They maintain that the law looks more towards the
    past than towards the present day. The Germans, Ukrainians, and
    Belarusians also have their doubts.

    In the 2002 general census, 471,000 individuals, in other words 1.5
    percent of the Polish Republic's citizens, declared themselves to be
    of a nationality other than Polish. This result is being questioned by
    national and ethnic activists, who estimate their strength (very
    modestly) at 5 percent of Poland's 39 billion inhabitants.

    The Ukrainians seek the causes for their weak representation in
    ongoing Polonization?some would say coerced?which affects them in
    particular because they are dispersed as a result of the postwar
    resettlement operation.

    The Belarusians are afraid of an explicit nationality identity or
    of the label "kacap" [an ethnic slur] and do not want to be identified
    with what is going on across the eastern border in their kindred
    state.

    The small numbers of Germans in the census is the result, in their
    opinion, of political and PR techniques: namely, the result of the
    nonexistent "Silesian nationality," which drastically reduced the
    Germans' holdings.

    The Jews do not know why the census showed that there were only a
    bit more than a thousand of them, although they were counting on a
    result ten times higher. Everyone pins the blame for the poor results
    on the methodology of the census.

    If we assume that three times as many of our citizens might have
    admitted to having national roots, we still have hardly any minorities
    at all. Yet our level of dislike for other nations as revealed by the
    CBOS [Public Opinion Research Center] research carried out at the end
    of 2004 -- if these results can be translated into attitudes towards
    nationalities residing in Poland?is astonishingly high. In descending
    order, we are not fond of: the Roma/Gypsies (56 percent negative
    assessments), Russians (53 percent), Jews (45 percent), Belarusians
    (37 percent), Ukrainians (34 percent), Germans (34 percent),
    Lithuanians (21 percent), Slovaks (16 percent), and Czechs (14
    percent).

    The idea of enshrining minority rights in a statutory act was
    promoted as far back as in 1990, by Jacek Kuron. Then he fought for
    nationality rights for two years. The law took on a conclusive form at
    the end of 2004. "By a miracle we managed to finish work, because
    during the final stretch such underlying layers of xenophobia
    manifested themselves, such great grievances against minorities, that
    it seemed that we had come up against insurmountable barriers," says
    Eugeniusz Czykwin from the SLD [Democratic Left Alliance],
    parliamentary deputy rapporteur and a representative of the Belarusian
    community. He says that for years he has not heard so many negative
    opinions about minorities at the Sejm: "If those of us on the
    commission had not broken several parliamentary deputies from the
    Civic Platform [PO], the law would still be in its infancy," Czykwin
    believes.

    Disputed Language

    The Polish state had multiethnic roots from the very beginning. In
    the prewar Polish Republic (in 1931), as many as 10.5 million of its
    some 32 million inhabitants (more than 32 percent) declared themselves
    to be of a nationality other than Polish. Minorities, as well as the
    so-called "from-round-heres" (those who were unable to identify a
    group they belonged to), had a numerical advantage over Poles in close
    to one-third of the country's territory. Nationality-based animosity
    was a common event?and it has historical repercussions to this very
    day. The war and postwar migrations fundamentally changed the ethnic
    proportions. PRL [People's Republic of Poland] propaganda propounding
    the moral and political unity of the Polish nation also had its
    effect.

    A representative of the Internal Affairs and Administration
    Ministry who took part in the work at the Sejm says that he could
    clearly sense the old fears among parliamentary deputies. Bad memories
    were revived. Even after the law was passed, Jerzy Czerwinski, a
    parliamentary deputy from the Catholic-National Movement [RKN] from
    the Opole region, still thought that it was unnecessary: "Because
    minority rights are very well protected in Poland even without it," he
    reiterates. He also sought to restrict minority privileges in terms of
    supplementary languages in public offices, geographical names, and
    schooling. Jacek Kuron at one time proposed that a second language be
    established in gminas [the lowest level of Polish territorial
    administration, smaller than powiats] where no less than 8 percent of
    the population declared themselves to belong to a different national
    group. This criterion applied to 48 gminas in the country. Then the
    bar was raised to 20 percent?which reduced the number of gminas
    inhabited by nationalities to 42. In the autumn of last year, the Sejm
    voted to institute a 50 percent threshold, which would have granted
    statutory rights to only five gminas in Poland: one Lithuanian one and
    four Belarusian ones. None of the gminas resided in by Germans would
    have been able to benefit from privileges (this is because the local
    population was divided into Germans and Silesians). After the Senate
    made amendments, parliament ultimately adopted a 20-percent threshold,
    and so we have 42 gminas with nationalities (see map below).

    Border Lines

    As concerns the Germans, symbols remain a bone of
    contention. Tensions have been sparked not simply by monuments
    commemorating the death of the German soldiers from a given village
    (this is a tradition of Catholic and protestant parishes in these
    lands), but rather by the Nazi motifs placed on them?for example, the
    name Hitlersee on a monument in Szczedrzyk: "There has been surprising
    stubbornness to the retain names imparted by the Third Reich, even
    though German activists knew full well that such practices are banned
    in Germany itself," says Professor Danuta Berlinska, a sociologist
    from Opole University. When this law comes into force, it should solve
    this touchy issue?it forbids minorities from referring to names from
    the years 1933-1945, which were imparted by the Third Reich or by the
    USSR. But a large number of German names that might appear after 1 May
    could spark new conflicts. As might the introduction of German as a
    "supplementary language" in public offices.

    Sometimes what gets people's goat boils down to very detailed
    issues, for example concerning German soldiers. The Germans write on
    their plaques that these soldiers "fell" [a term entailing an
    honorable death in Polish], while we refuse them this right and want
    soldiers in Nazi uniforms to be identified as "victims" of the
    war. This issue has repercussions with the civil rights ombudsman's
    office, for example: "I understand that people oppose soldiers of an
    aggressor army being made equivalent to those who defended
    independence," believes Tomasz Gellert, chief of the division for
    protecting the rights of foreigners and national minorities. "But the
    way the world is, soldiers are treated as having fallen in battle,
    regardless of what they were fighting for and whether they wanted to
    take part in this war or not."

    Wartime history also constantly casts a shadow over
    Polish-Ukrainian relations as well: "We are talking about the
    respectful commemoration of the victims of the borderland conflict, as
    we call it," says Miron Kertyczak, president of the Union of
    Ukrainians in Poland. To put things explicitly, this is about
    commemorating the soldiers of the UPA [Ukrainian Insurrection Army]:
    "This raises controversy; we do not receive consent for our proposed
    wording on monuments." He believes an breakthrough is imminent,
    however. "If the issue of the Lyczakowski Cemetery in Lvov is settled
    in line with Warsaw's thinking, then the ice will be broken for us
    too."

    But if chairman Kertyczak were to evaluate the state of
    Polish-Ukrainian relations, he would give them a B grade. The
    Ukrainians have accepted apologies for their postwar resettlement,
    received modest compensation for their sojourn at the labor camp in
    Jaworzno (for them this was a deportation camp, where 161 Ukrainians
    died). "We consider the issue closed, although we were not successful
    in securing compensation under the regulations that apply to victims
    of repression," the chairman says. "But we have our own education,
    publishers, we are building churches?there are no major complaints
    here."

    The good assessment is undoubtedly affected by the fact that
    attitudes towards Ukrainians are changing before our very eyes. In the
    CBOS research investigating likes and dislikes, Ukrainians were for
    years among the most disliked nationalities: 65 percent of Poles gave
    them a negative evaluation in 1993, and this ratio remained around the
    level of 50-60 percent for years. In 2003, more than half of Poles
    still felt dislike for them. In the surveys taken before the end of
    last year, the rate dropped to 34 percent: "This is the effect of the
    orange revolution," Kertyczak says. "Poles' support for the events in
    Kiev meant that in our mutual relations we have moved beyond the elite
    circle," he goes on to say. Ordinary people saw ordinary people,
    rather than Ukrainian devils. "We began to return to internal
    emigration, to admit to our Ukrainian roots," the leader of Ukrainians
    explains. "If a census were held today, we would make a much better
    showing."

    Parliamentary deputy Eugeniusz Czykwin, one of the Belarusian
    leaders, gives the state of mutual relations a grade of C+. "We do not
    have the kind of historical events haunting us as there are in
    relations with the Germans or Ukrainians," he says. Although there are
    wounds here too: "The commanders who operated in these lands after the
    war have been rehabilitated," he explains. They try to make heroes out
    of them, when for us they remain terror-mongers, arsonists of our
    churches, who wanted to throw Belarusians to the other side of the
    border."

    What is going on in Belarus has an impact on the perception of the
    Belarusian minority: "The authoritarian government in Minsk definitely
    does not improve our position," Czykwin agrees. The statements by
    Aleksandr Lukashenka, such as his recent state of the nation address,
    contain very controversial assertions about Belarusian Poles,
    Polesians, who allegedly support his regime profoundly. And this, in
    turn, has its effect on Belarusians in Poland. Belarusian television
    programs, where Polish areas bordering on Belarus are portrayed as a
    zone of destitution and ruined collective farms, augment the problem.

    A Belarusian identity is not in fashion today. Czykwin is traveling
    around the minority gminas in connection with the coming into force of
    the minority law. It permits geographical names to be established in
    the minority language: "Elderly people are decidedly against this;
    they say that they do not want to additionally irritate Poles," he
    reports. "Young people are bolder, but they are dampened by the dark
    image of Belarusians as portrayed in Polish media." The Belarusians'
    mood was also affected by the downfall of the SLD, which they have
    stuck by for years. "I will only say for myself: my mother associates
    Belarusian's civilizational advance with the PRL," Czykwin says, but
    he also points out that during the first elections Belarusians were on
    the side of the Solidarity camp: "We were pushed into the embrace of
    the left wing by the Catholicism and nationalism fighting it out
    here. There is vast disappointment in the left, but in the forthcoming
    elections it will transla te more into a low turnout?Belarusian voters
    will not switch to other groups."

    Unknown Nations

    The Kashubians, on the other hand, have consistently backed the
    Solidarity camp since 1989. The UW [Freedom Union], and then the AWS
    [Solidarity Electoral Action] won strong support among them, now there
    is every indication that they will cast the most votes for the PO
    [Civic Platform]. These sympathies did not help them in attaining the
    status of a nation. The issue of their own statehood proved to be an
    insurmountable obstacle: "We submitted a compromise request, for us to
    be treated as an ethnic minority," says Artur Jablonski, starosta
    [powiat-level administration head] of Puck, chairman of the
    Kashubian-Pomeranian Association. The Kashubians have their own
    language, literature, and demonstrate clear cultural
    distinctiveness. "But there was resistance; we were led to understand
    that the commission would not consent to the proliferation of minority
    entities. We did not go to battle over it so as not to hamper the
    legislative process, because the law would still not have been
    passed." Suspended in a vacuum, the Kashubians nevertheless enjoy all
    the benefits awarded to minorities. "And we do our own thing, even
    so!" Jablonski adds.

    Silesians, on the other hand, with 173,000 individuals the largest
    minority in the census, want an explicit expression of this. In
    February, the Regional Court in Katowice refused to register the Union
    of People of Silesian Nationality. An application to this effect had
    first been first submitted in 1996. That case made its way through all
    the court levels in Poland, and ended up in 2004 before the Great
    Chamber of the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which ruled that
    the Polish courts had not violated their rights by refusing to
    register the Silesians. The judges in Strasburg did not deal with
    whether the Silesians constituted a nation or not, but rather pointed
    out that in requesting registration the Silesian activists were
    seeking election privileges.

    The statutes were amended, but the court rejected them, stating
    that only cosmetic changes had been made. "We are considering the
    possibility of registering an association on the level of European
    structures," says Andrzej Roczniok, a leader of the new Silesian
    national initiative. The Silesians will move heaven and earth to
    achieve their goal. "Those in Warsaw will not manage to sweep the
    largest minority in the country under the carpet," he insists. In the
    forthcoming elections to the Sejm, some of the Silesians want to run
    on the tickets of the German minority, which are privileged in terms
    of not having to cross the election threshold.

    One can also expect tensions with respect to the Roma
    minority. "Last year we received some 30 complaints from Roma," we
    were told by Gellert from the office of the civil rights
    ombudsman. "We are attempting to assuage tensions, but it is clearly
    evident that we understand them, but they are not trying to understand
    us." The Roma still utilize the topic of discrimination when applying
    for asylum abroad.

    Officially we are a Republic of nine nations and four ethnic
    minorities. On paper, everything checks out, although this doesn't
    include any Vietnamese, Chinese, or individuals from the post-Soviet
    republics at all. They will probably ultimately be found, and then we
    will have a truer picture of the situation. The problems reported by
    minorities still frequently come up against irritation and scorn; we
    still consider them to be on the very fringe of the fringe. Although
    many people believe that we are dealing here with a statistical error,
    or with rare oddities against the wider Polish backdrop, it is
    important to show some appreciation for these oddities. For the good
    of the majority. And the EU is touchy on this issue.

    [Box] Changes in Signs

    In mid-March, the voivode of the Podlaskie Voivodship met with the
    authorities of the 13 gminas where the regulations of the minority law
    can be applied. "The voivode declared his assistance, but it was
    astonishing that we did not notice any zeal to exercise the new
    regulations in the 12 Belarusian gminas, even those where the minority
    is in the clear majority," says Marek Liberadzki, the viovode's
    officer for national and ethnic minorities. Perhaps our Belarusians
    are waiting for some sort of practical models to follow. "We will wait
    and see," Liberadzki comments.

    Applications could come in from the Punsk gmina in the voivodship's
    north eastern corner, which is three-quarters dominated by
    Lithuanians. "We will begin by changing the signs along the entry and
    exit roads to our villages," says Witold Liszkowski, wojt [village
    administration head] of Punsk. The voivode will finance this change;
    putting up additional street signs is up to the gmina's own
    authorities. Neither is there any zeal in terms of changing the
    orthographic rules for writing surnames. Perhaps they will appear
    first in the personal identity cards of young Lithuanians.

    "We are approaching this issue very practically," the wojt
    explains. Changing one's personal identity card requires one to change
    all one's documents, including property records: "It's a shame to
    waste the time and money; what is most important is that we do have
    such a right." And in terms of the supplementary language in public
    offices, the act only upholds the existing state of affairs: "All the
    employees know Lithuanian, and in contacts with the population it has
    for years been the primary language. Official letters are of course
    written in the official language, and here probably nothing will
    change." They are issued, after all, in order to function in Poland.

    [box] National and Ethnic Minorities

    First figure: data from 1931 census?second figure: activists
    estimates in 2002 -- third figure: data from 2002 census

    Belarusians [national minority] -- 1 million -- 200,000-300,000 --
    50,000

    Czechs [national minority] -- 38,000 -- 3,000 -- 800

    Karaims [ethnic minority] -- 1,000 -- 200 -- 43

    Kashubians [neither an ethnic minority nor a national minority] --
    200,000 -- 300,000-400,000 -- 5,100

    Lithuanians [national minority]: 8,000 -- 20,000-25,000 -- 5,800

    Lemks [ethnic minority]: 1.2 million -- 60,000-70,000 -- 5,800

    Germans [national minority]: 800,000 -- 300,000-500,000 -- 153,000

    Armenians [national minority]: 6,000 -- 5,000-8,000 -- 1,100

    Roma [ethnic minority]: 50,000 -- 20,000-30,000 -- 12,700

    Russians [national minority] 140,000 -- 10,000-15,000 -- 6,100

    Slovaks [national minority]: not accounted for -- 10,000-20,000 -- 2,000

    Silesians [neither an ethnic minority nor national minority]: (no
    figure) -- (no figure) -- 173,000

    Tatars [ethnic minority] -- 13,000 -- 5,000 -- 453

    Ukrainians [national minority]: 3 million -- 200,000-300,000 -- 31,000

    Jews [national minority]: 3 million -- 8,000-10,000 -- 1,100

    Poland's population in total: approx. 32 million -- 38
    million?approx. 39 million.

    [Box] What Does the Law Give Them?

    Individuals who belong to the minority have the right to: write
    their names and surnames in accordance with the orthographic rules of
    their language, to learn the minority language and to freely use it in
    public and private life. In gminas where a minority exceeds 20 percent
    of the population, its language can be used as a supplementary
    language in public offices and used in the names of localities, sites,
    and streets (with the exception of those names which were given by the
    Third Reich or the USSR in the years 1933-1945). The public
    authorities have the obligation to support cultural, publishing, and
    educational activities of minorities (including through subsidies).

    [The map shows the powiats [the middle level of Polish territorial
    administration, larger than gminas, smaller than voivodships] where
    national or ethnic minorities are strongly represented: Belarusians,
    Lithuanians, Kashubians, and Germans.]
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