Attacks against Muslims in Poland
Secondary school students from Berlin have reported disturbing experiences during a field trip to Poland. Muslim students wearing headscarves were repeatedly insulted and threatened, according to German media reports. The students were following the traces of the murdered Jews. Poland's press is upset by the reports - for different reasons.
Silence would be a sin
For Gazeta Wyborcza the incidents are another indication that it's high time to take action against xenophobic acts of violence in Poland:
“The leader of the [ruling party] PiS, the president, the prime minister and the ministers have unleashed the anti-Islam and anti-refugee hysteria. Today Muslims, immigrants and refugees fleeing war have the same status the Jews had in the pre-war period: they are despised and stigmatised. … German youths (including Muslims) visiting Poland were insulted and spat on. A journalist of Wyborcza newspaper was hit in the face and insulted by a nationalist thug during a meeting with a priest from Aleppo in a building of the Warsaw Curia on Friday. … Any kind of silence on our part will be our weakness and our sin. Today we must break our silence.”
German fake news against Poland's sovereignty
The coverage of the incident by German media prompts Wpolityce.pl to criticise their reporting in general:
“The amount of fake news is growing, propaganda is seeping into it. ... The high point of the most recent cases of manipulation is the story about the field trip of a German school group. It's full of inconsistencies, implausible and isn't backed up by a shred of proof. ... What's behind it? The will to break the Polish government's steely resolve. In the first place it's about the issue of immigrants, with whom the Germans simply can't come to grips. And this conflict is about far more than just that: at heart it's about slowing the 'good change' [the government's name for its reform programme], which has put Poland on a strong economic and political footing. Neither Germany nor Russia can come to terms with the way the Polish government is consistently expanding its sovereignty.”