In the film library of the Palace of Culture and Science (PKiN), an iconic building in Warsaw, the recently released film Green Border, by Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland, is being screened these days. With this story about the hardships of a Syrian migrant family who, in 2021, deceivedly crosses the border from Belarus to Poland through the Bialowieza Forest, and about the impious treatment they receive from the Polish border guard by order of the State, Holland won the Prize. Jury Special at the Venice Film Festival, and also the wrath of his country’s ultra-conservative Government.
Law and Justice (PiS), the ruling party, has made the rejection of immigration an axis of two consecutive terms in power, and erected a fence on the Belarusian border – before which Brussels stood in profile – to cut the wave of migrants from the Middle East and Africa who, attracted to Minsk with the promise of easy entry into the EU, crossed into Poland on foot through the forest. Although in smaller numbers, they continue to arrive.
To capitalize on its work, the Government scheduled for this Sunday, when elections are held, a referendum with four questions, two of them immigration-related, with a general aroma of political battering ram against the opposition. Questions have a load of meaning that distances them from neutrality. “Do you support the reception of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa, in accordance with the forced relocation mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy?” says the third question. The fourth reads: “Are you in favor of removing the fence on Poland’s border with Belarus?”
The other two questions are not about migration. “Do you support the sale of state-owned companies to foreign entities, with the consequent loss of control by Poles over strategic sectors of the economy?” says the first. The second asks: “Do you support increasing the retirement age, including restoring the increased retirement age to 67 for women and men?” The latter points to PiS’s great rival, the liberal-centrist Donald Tusk, who as Prime Minister (2007-2014) raised the retirement age to 67. In 2017, the Law and Justice Government reversed the rule giving workers the option to choose whether or not they wanted to retire at that age.
“This referendum is meaningless and the questions are not necessary; All four aim to present the opposition negatively, as if these issues were now on their program, and to benefit from polarization,” argues political scientist Agnieszka Lada-Konefal. No major party proposes removing the fence with Belarus, and the information attached to the questions does not mention that the EU migrant redistribution quotas can be replaced by payments instead of reception, nor that there would be exceptions for countries with high migratory pressure, with which Poland – which hosts more than a million refugees from the war in Ukraine – would benefit. In short, the wording of the questions suggests that the opposition Tusk and Brussels are working together against Poland’s sovereignty.
For political scientist Lada-Konefal, the referendum is also problematic for the privacy of citizens. To be valid, there must be a minimum participation of 50%, so its detractors call not to participate. “At the polling station, my name is marked on the lists when voting for the elections, and if I say that I am not going to participate in the referendum, my name is not marked on the other list, so the Government can know who has participated. and who doesn’t,” warns Lada-Konefal.
Coinciding elections with a polarizing referendum – in that case to shore up laws against sexual orientation – was the mechanism used last year by the ultra-conservative prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán. But it failed by not achieving 50% turnout at the polls.
For PiS and its leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, anti-immigration rhetoric is key and hence the disqualification campaign against Agnieszka Holland – who lives in France – for her film Green Border. The film includes a horrified border guard who questions what they are doing, and ends by denouncing the difference in treatment of Middle Eastern migrants compared to the welcome Ukrainian refugees.
The Government accuses Holland of presenting “the Poles as bandits and murderers, just as the Nazis did”, and has ordered that cinemas subsidized with public funds – this is the case of the PKiN film library – broadcast “a video” before the screening. prepared to show the elements that are missing in this film,” which, of course in the eyes of the Executive, “contains many falsehoods and distortions.”
