2024-01-02 19:54 update: 2024-01-03, 14:21
Fot. PAP/Mikołaj Kuras
Polish prosecutors have launched an investigation into a racist statement made by a right-wing satirist during a television interview.
Jan Pietrzak, an anti-communist satirist, comedian and singer, who was very popular with opposition movements during the communist rule in the 1980s, has since seen his popularity fade. He has also become increasingly right-wing and started to support the nationalist and Eurosceptic Law and Justice (PiS), whose eight years in power ended last October.
On Sunday, Pietrzak caused outrage in Poland when he said the barracks in the former Nazi German death camps could be used as housing for immigrants.
"We have barracks for immigrants in Auschwitz, in Majdanek, in Treblinka and in Stutthof (the Nazi German concentration camps during WWII - PAP)," Pietrzak said in a programme broadcast by the right-wing Telewizja Republika, adding that "we have many barracks built by the Germans."
On Tuesday, prosecutor Szymon Banna told PAP, that "At the request of the Prosecutor General and in connection with the notifications received by the District Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw, proceedings were initiated today as regards the statements of a participant in the programme broadcast on December 31, 2023 on Telewizja Republika."
The prosecutor's decision came after Adam Bodnar, the Polish justice minister and Prosecutor General, announced on the X platform on Monday that he had asked the national prosecutor to investigate comments made by Pietrzak.
Earlier on Monday, the Centre for Monitoring Racist and Xenophobic Behaviour had notified a prosecutor's office of Pietrzak's words promoting Nazism and racist threats.
Later, President Andrzej Duda's aide, Marcin Mastalerek, said that Duda "was outraged" by Pietrzak comments.
The Auschwitz Museum also issued a statement saying the "vile anti-migration rhetoric is a shameful and terrifying manifestation of moral and intellectual corruption."
The prosecutor added that the investigation will concern public insult of a group of people due to their national and ethnic affiliation.
Banna said that evidence is being collected in the case and the proceedings are ongoing, which means that no charges have been brought against anyone. (PAP)
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