The Polish lower house of parliament, the Sejm, has approved a law to demolish monuments to the Red Army in Poland, excluding those in cemeteries, or those considered works of art, not in public areas, or related to scientific research. The legislation is part of Poland’s ‘decommunization’ law and states monuments “cannot pay tribute to persons, organizations, events or dates symbolizing communism or other totalitarian systems.”
“The law has been passed,” the press service of the Sejm confirmed to Russian state news agency TASS.
The Sejm suggested the monuments be destroyed with 12 months; there are 469 such structures with 250 related to the Red Army in Poland.
Authors of the bill say “keeping the names of institutions and monuments in honor of events and people who exerted their criminal influence on Poland’s history enables supporters of totalitarian systems to advance their views, what negatively affects the society.”
They called to revise the law by creating “legal tools for eliminating the demoralizing monuments and names from the public sites.” “This gives the public a clear signal that the state implements the constitutional principle banning the totalitarian regime, condemning and unmasking all steps related to promoting totalitarian views,” an explanatory note to the amendments said, reported TASS.
Moscow believes the law does not respect the Soviet ‘liberation’ of Poland from the Nazis. Poland considers Soviet occupation as a criminal, barbaric part of its past and does not want this time memorialized.
