Poland up in arms over rape in Rimini

Four men attacked a couple from Poland on Rimini beach on the weekend, beating the man senseless and raping the woman. Poland's deputy justice minister Patryk Jaki called for the attackers, four North Africans according to media reports, to be tortured and given the death penalty. Not just the incident itself but the reactions to it are making waves in Poland's press.

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Gazeta Wyborcza (PL) /

Minister using a double standard

Double standards are in play here, philosopher Magdalena Środa writes in a commentary for Gazeta Wyborcza:

“The events in Rimini were tragic. Not because 'refugees have raped a Polish woman' but because men have raped a woman. ... [Former] PiS city councillor Rafał Piasecki, who is from the same party as Jaki, tormented, insulted, raped, hounded and beat his wife for years. But for some reason I haven't heard Jaki saying that he should be tortured or get the death penalty for this. Is domestic rape a lesser crime? Or is it the number of rapists and their skin colour that makes him so fierce?”

wPolityce.pl (PL) /

Leftist liberals trivialising the crime

The nationalist web portal Wpolityce.pl sees the reactions of liberal Polish media to the rape in Rimini as typical and wrong:

“Evil is relativised and crimes are trivialised and even justified. Perverse individuals from North Africa have raped a Polish woman in the Italian resort of Rimini. Naturally this is a tragedy, but in 2016 one in three rapists in Poland got off with a suspended sentence. So when Deputy Justice Minister Patryk Jaki condemns the perpetrators in a display of emotion, he should be admonished to focus instead on the problems of women raped in Poland. … We should just get used to Islamist terror and the violence of immigrants, above all against women - at least that's what the left-liberal smart alecs keep telling us.”