After parliamentary election
Tens of thousands of nationalists march through Warsaw
People take part in the “Poland is not yet lost” independence march in Warsaw. photo
© Pawel Supernak/PAP/dpa
In Poland, the pro-European election winners are preparing to take power. Meanwhile, thousands of nationalists are taking to the streets to protest.
Tens of thousands of nationalists took to the streets on Polish Independence Day Warsaw marches. The demonstration under the motto “Poland is not lost yet” began on Saturday afternoon in the city center and was scheduled to end at the National Stadium. Many participants held up white and red flags, others carried hand torches. Crowds of people could be seen on television images. The city administration estimated the number of participants at at least 40,000. The organizers even spoke of the “largest patriotic rally in Europe”.
The police said they arrested 56 people, most of them for drug-related offenses. A group is also said to have tried to throw flares at a gas station.
Opposition leader Donald Tusk called for moderation in a video message on Independence Day on X, formerly Twitter: “Anyone who uses the word nation to divide and sow hatred is against the nation,” said the 66-year-old. Tusk’s Civic Platform (PO) and two other parties have a majority in the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, which meets on Monday. However, the previous Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki received the first order to form a government from the national conservative Law and Justice party (PiS).
On the eve of the national holiday, PiS chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski warned of Germany’s alleged dominance in the European Union. “We Poles want to be free, we want to be independent and we don’t want to submit to the Germans,” said the 74-year-old, according to the PAP agency. A “concrete plan” has already been drawn up which, if implemented by the EU, would lead to the loss of sovereignty and the “destruction of the Polish state”, Kaczynski claimed.
Independence Day commemorates the fact that the founder of the state, Jozef Pilsudski, returned to Warsaw from imprisonment in Magdeburg in 1918 and took over command of the Polish troops on November 11th. After the First World War, long-divided Poland gained independence from Prussia, Austria-Hungary and Russia.