Russian police raid homes and offices of opposition activists // Polish MEP on mission to change Europe’s hate speech laws
Russian police have
raided dozens of offices of the opposition group behind mass protests this
summer and the homes of its supporters. Leonid Volkov, a close
aide to the opposition leader Alexei Navalny,
said police searches were under way at more than 80 addresses in 29 cities.
“This is not only offices and apartments of coordinators but also the homes of
employees and volunteers,” Volkov said on Twitter.
Polish MEP on mission to change Europe’s hate speech laws
Navalny’s spokeswoman,
Kira Yarmysh, said the raids were “an act of intimidation” and accused
authorities of trying to deal a “massive blow” to the organisation. “The
police’s only goal is to confiscate our material and paralyse our work,” she
said. Last month Russian
investigators launched a money laundering inquiry against Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption (FBK), which has worked to expose officials’
questionable wealth. Navalny and his supporters
called the summer protests after opposition candidates were barred from
standing in local elections in Moscow. Allies of Vladimir Putin suffered big
losses in the elections last weekend.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/12/russian-police-raid-homes-and-offices-of-opposition-activistsPolish MEP on mission to change Europe’s hate speech laws
Newly elected MEP
Magdalena Adamowicz is on a mission to craft new Europe-wide laws on hate
speech, and she has more moral authority to make the demands than most. Her husband, Paweł
Adamowicz, for more than two decades the mayor of the northern Polish city of
Gdańsk was stabbed
while
on stage at a charity event in January and died soon after. He had been a vocal
critic of Poland’s nationalist government and an advocate of tolerance in the
city, which had long been a stronghold of the liberal opposition.
“It’s my mission and my obligation to do this.
I don’t want the death of my husband to be in vain,” she said during a recent
interview in Gdańsk, to which she wore a black T-shirt emblazoned with the
slogan “Imagine there’s no hate”, which has become her trademark look. In the week after her
husband’s murder, Adamowicz was in shock and did not participate in public
events or rallies, she said. Afterwards, though, she was struck with a sense of
purpose, and decided to stand in European parliamentary elections in May. She
easily won a seat, and said working on new Europe-wide hate speech legislation
is the main task for her mandate.
“The problem is not
only in Poland, the problem is worldwide. We need new regulations to define
hate speech. In Poland we
have some regulations but they are limited and they are clearly not working.
Hate is everywhere,” she said....
