The Hamburg Regional Court has sentenced a 34-year-old Afghan migrant to two years’ probation for rape and several counts of aggravated assault against his former partner, an 18-year-old girl. German social media accounts have already sharply criticized the sentence, arguing it is another example of lenient sentencing in the face of serious crimes.
While the defendant initially admitted only to striking her with his hand, he ultimately confessed to the remaining charges. The court convicted him of four counts of assault, one count of aggravated assault, and one count of rape. As a condition of his probation, he must pay an additional €3,000 in compensation after paying another €2,000 in damages to the victim before the verdict.
Judge Malte Wellhausen detailed that the six offenses occurred between autumn 2016 and spring 2018. The trial faced substantial procedural delays, leading the court to count four months of the sentence of the Afghan man, who works in IT, as already served.
The court found the Afghan man physically assaulted his former girlfriend on five separate occasions, including an incident where he used a leather belt and another instance where he choked her to the point of respiratory distress. The rape took place in October 2016, approximately ten years ago.
The defendant first met the 18-year-old high school graduate from Lower Saxony through an online platform. Physical abuse began only months after their initial meeting, starting when he struck her face. When the young woman reacted with fear and tears, the defendant remarked, “That wasn’t even hard.”
Routine physical assaults followed over minor issues, as well as disputes stemming from the victim’s parents opposing her relationship with the Afghan-born defendant.
The sexual assault occurred in his bedroom while both were in bed, leaving the victim with physical pain and bleeding. Despite the nature of the assault, she did not initially identify the incident as rape. Over the following months, the physical abuse persisted, including the incident involving the leather belt while the woman reportedly blamed herself for the incidents, according to German newspaper Welt.
In August 2017, after overhearing her covertly speaking with a friend on the phone, the defendant struck her face, causing her nose to bleed, and choked her violently by the neck. Rather than reaching out for assistance, the victim suffered severe distress, blamed herself, and engaged in self-harm.
During a subsequent trip to the United States, the defendant proposed to her, and she accepted out of fear. She eventually managed to break away from the relationship in 2018 by relocating her life to Denmark.
The criminal investigation began after the woman noticed a missing person report that featured a photograph of a garden in the Poppenbüttel district of Hamburg, where she had previously resided with the defendant. Concerned for the safety of the woman shown in the report, she eventually spoke with police officers and detailed the abuse she had endured, prompting authorities to open a criminal case.
Judicial findings later confirmed that the disappearance of the other woman was entirely unrelated to the defendant. Authorities proceeded with the investigation despite the victim’s reluctance to participate from Denmark. Further delays arose due to pandemic border closures and the illness of an expert witness, pushing the formal filing of charges to 2024.
The victim in the case tried to avoid the trial altogether and only joined in for video testimony after facing potential prosecution. The court ultimately found her account credible due to its memory detail and complete lack of malicious intent toward the accused.
Defense lawyer Claudia Krüger was positive about the ruling, calling it “a judgment with a sense of proportion. I am very satisfied.“
While the defense had argued for a suspended sentence, prosecutors had requested a prison term of three years and two months. The defense won out but the sentence is subject to appeal.
BioTexCom, a Ukrainian firm, has announced a September conference in Warsaw promoting surrogacy and offering the “purchase” of a child for 65,000 euros; the case is now with prosecutors
Since 2023, Ordo Iuris has submitted opinions to UN and EU bodies arguing that surrogacy constitutes human trafficking and the sale of children under international law.
The Ordo Iuris Institute cooperates with UN Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem, whose report on violence against mothers cited its position; Alsalem was a guest at a conference organized in June 2026.
Ordo Iuris advocates a new Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child banning surrogacy and has prepared Polish translations of two UN reports on the issue.
The Ordo Iuris Institute is petitioning Poland’s Minister of Justice, Waldemar Żurek, to block the event organized in Warsaw by BioTexCom as a promotion of human trafficking; the appeal is available at niedlasurogacji.pl.
On September 12–13, the Ukrainian company BioTexCom plans to hold a conference in Warsaw aimed at promoting programs offering surrogate motherhood and in vitro fertilization. The company is inviting interested parties to individual meetings with its representatives, offering surrogacy packages worth nearly 65,000 euros. Under Polish law—unlike Ukrainian law—surrogacy may be classified as a criminal offense. The matter of the Warsaw conference has already been referred to the prosecutor’s office.
This event is not an isolated episode but another manifestation of a broader phenomenon: Poland, alongside other Western and Central European countries that lack their own surrogacy regulations, has for years been becoming a market for foreign so-called reproductive companies. In this context, it is worth recalling that the issue of surrogacy has for years been a central concern of the Ordo Iuris Center for International Law—both at the domestic level and in the most important international forums.
Opinions and positions at the UN and the European Union
Since 2023, the Institute has regularly submitted opinions and positions to bodies of the United Nations (UN) and institutions of the European Union (EU), consistently arguing that surrogacy meets the definition of human trafficking and the sale of children under international law. In February 2023, Ordo Iuris experts published an analysis showing that European Union law does not require member states to legalize surrogacy. When, in December 2024, the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on trafficking in women and girls that for the first time explicitly addressed the phenomenon of surrogacy, the Ordo Iuris Institute described it as a significant precedent.
A special place in these efforts is occupied by the cooperation with Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, who consistently defends the biological understanding of sex and motherhood in her reports. Ordo Iuris took part in informal expert consultations conducted by Alsalem for both of her key documents—the report on violence against women in the context of surrogacy, submitted to the UN General Assembly in October 2025, and the report on violence against mothers, presented to the Human Rights Council in July 2026. Importantly, the Ordo Iuris Institute’s position was explicitly cited in the latter document, in the section addressing the devaluation of motherhood in contemporary public and institutional discourse.
This cooperation also took a direct form: on June 3, 2026, Reem Alsalem personally took part—as a special guest—in the international academic conference “Motherhood in the 21st Century” organized by Ordo Iuris at Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University. During the panel devoted to surrogacy, she presented the findings of her report, outlining the profile of women who become surrogates—almost exclusively poor women, often single mothers or immigrants—and calling for a model of surrogacy abolition modeled on the abolition of prostitution. She was accompanied by Olivia Maurel, spokeswoman for the international Casablanca Declaration—a coalition of more than 150 experts from 75 countries advocating a universal ban on surrogacy—who was herself born through the procedure and shared a moving personal testimony.
Cooperation with the initiators of the Casablanca Declaration
This is not the first time the paths of Ordo Iuris and the circle surrounding the Casablanca Declaration have crossed. As early as April 2024, the Ordo Iuris Institute took part in an international conference in Rome organized by the Declaration’s initiators, devoted entirely to the issue of surrogacy, and addressed its findings in the commentary “The Right to a Child, or the Rights of the Child?” The participation of the Declaration’s spokeswoman in the Warsaw conference in June 2026 is thus a continuation of many years of ongoing cooperation with this coalition, not an isolated episode.
A call for a new Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child
In its opinions submitted to the UN, the Ordo Iuris Institute consistently puts forward a specific legislative proposal: the adoption of a new Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child that would explicitly prohibit surrogacy. The legal argumentation, developed in particular in the November opinion for the Special Rapporteur, invokes Article 35 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Article 2(a) of the existing 2000 Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, whose definition of “the sale of children”—in the assessment of Ordo Iuris experts—also covers surrogacy agreements under which a child is transferred in exchange for remuneration or another benefit.
Polish translations of UN reports
The latest element of this activity is a publication that took place just a few days ago. On August 25, 2026, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights published on its official website Polish translations of both of Reem Alsalem’s reports mentioned above—on violence against women in the context of surrogacy and on violence against mothers. Both translations were prepared by the Ordo Iuris Institute. Thanks to this, Polish-speaking lawyers, journalists, public administration officials, and NGOs have gained direct access to the full content of both documents—without relying on the fragmentary quotations and secondary media coverage through which UN reports had until now been known in Polish public discourse.
The actions outlined above—more than a dozen opinions and positions submitted to the UN and the EU, participation in the UN Special Rapporteur’s expert consultations, its own international academic conference in Warsaw, cooperation with the initiators of the Casablanca Declaration, the call for a new international treaty, and the preparation of official translations of UN reports—together form a picture of Ordo Iuris’s systematic, years-long engagement in the fight against surrogacy at both the domestic and international levels. It is against this backdrop that the Ordo Iuris Institute’s opposition to the BioTexCom conference planned for September 12–13 in Warsaw should be understood. The Ordo Iuris Institute has prepared a petition to Poland’s Minister of Justice, Waldemar Żurek, calling for the event to be blocked.
“The conference that the Ukrainian company is planning for September in Warsaw is not a neutral informational event, but a promotional campaign for a commercial reproductive business that treats a woman’s body as a means of production and a child as a product tailored to the client’s expectations.
Polish law does not explicitly criminalize surrogacy, but that does not mean a legal vacuum. An agreement under which a child is handed over in exchange for payment may meet the definition of human trafficking, and organizing and promoting such practices on the territory of the Republic of Poland should meet with a response from the relevant authorities. Ordo Iuris has for years documented the mechanisms of exploitation built into commercial surrogacy: from Colombia, through Ukraine, to the United States—and consistently works to ensure that this problem is no longer treated as the private affair of ‘commissioning parents,’ but is recognized for what it truly is: a form of economic exploitation of women in difficult life circumstances and a violation of a child’s fundamental right to identity and to a bond with the mother who gave birth to them,” notes Julia Książek of the Ordo Iuris Center for International Law.
A 23-year-old Guinean national already under an order to leave France (QQTF) is in pre-trial detention after being accused of raping a 17-year-old girl in foster care in Évreux on the evening of July 26. The details of this case are only now being reported, a month later.
The teenager, who lives in a foster home and was receiving psychological care, encountered the man near the city’s cathedral. Prosecutors say he forced her into his car, issued threats, paused at a kebab shop to eat, and then took her to his apartment close to the cathedral. Once inside, he is alleged to have slapped her, pushed her onto the bed and raped her as she cried out, according to French newspaper Paris-Normandie.
A roommate heard the screams. Afraid of confronting the resident himself, he called the police. Officers arrived to find the suspect insisting that “everything is fine.” From the rear of the apartment, they could still hear the girl sobbing. They entered immediately.
A subsequent medical examination recorded ten days of temporary incapacity for the victim. The suspect, who holds a permanent bodywork job in the Paris region and has no previous convictions, denied any rape allegations. He told investigators the girl had consented. Prosecutors rejected his request for release, pointing to the victim’s vulnerability, the risk that he might pressure her, and his irregular immigration status. A deportation order against him had already been issued but never carried out.
German police have released a photograph of a violent suspect, Emre Battal, whom police believe may be armed. Battal allegedly shot two people on Saturday afternoon in the city of Worms and remains on the run.
Police report the man became involved in an altercation with another man and a woman at around 4:30 p.m., with the argument turning violent. Battal drew his firearm and shot both the man and the woman. They both suffered serious gunshot wounds but are not in critical condition.
Battall quickly fled the scene, and despite an intense police manhunt, he successfully evaded capture. As a result, a photograph of the 31-year-old suspect has now been released. During the shooting, he was wearing a black T-shirt, black shoes, dark shorts, and a black baseball cap. He also has a distinctive lion tattoo.
German police warn the public not to approach the man, as he may still be armed.
The Alfa unit of the Security Service of Ukraine (SZBU) struck a Tu-95MS strategic bomber in Engels, Russia, announced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Facebook on Friday.
Ukraine’s leader also confirmed that Ukrainian units attacked an oil refinery in Russia’s Yaroslavl region and several targets in the Black Sea.
“In the last 24 hours, Ukraine’s defense forces struck an oil refinery in the Yaroslavl region. The distance is a thousand kilometers from the front line. In the Black Sea, too, we have given our own just answers to the Russian war. In Engels, Russia, soldiers of the SZBU Alpha unit struck a Tu-95MS strategic bomber aircraft. It is precisely with such aircraft that strikes are carried out against Ukraine,” wrote Zelensky in his post.
Pro-Ukrainian accounts on X celebrated the destruction of the plane.
Ukrainian Forces has taken out another of Russia's long-range strategic bombers, after overnight strikes on the Engels-2 airbase, 700km distance from Ukraine.
Mostly being constructed back in the 1960's-1970's, Russia's rapidly vanishing bomber fleet had only recently lost… pic.twitter.com/YD3e5QPgXC
Operation Spiderweb in June 2025 is widely considered Ukraine’s most ambitious strike on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet. After 18 months of planning, the SBU smuggled 117 FPV drones into Russia inside wooden cabins mounted on trucks. The trucks were parked near several airbases. The roofs of the vehicles were remotely opened and the drones were guided to their targets, which included Olenya , Belaya , Dyagilevo, and Ivanovo.
Ukraine claimed 41 aircraft were hit, including Tu-95s, Tu-22M3s, at least one Tu-160, and A-50 airborne early-warning planes, representing about 34 percent of Russia’s strategic cruise-missile carriers and causing roughly $7 billion in damage.
Independent satellite analysis and NATO assessments confirmed 10–13 aircraft destroyed and around 20–40 damaged. Visual evidence showed burning Tu-95s and Tu-22M3s on the tarmac.
The latest attack reveals that these Russian bombers still remain high-profile targets for Ukraine. Russia still appears unable to fully shield its fleet from drone and missile strikes despite moving many of these planes farther east in the country.
The Tu-95 itself is a four-engine turboprop design first produced by the Soviet Union in the 1950s. It is still used because no modern replacement is in series production.
The attack targeting a military patrol in the Benzú area of Ceuta last night was a pre-planned ambush rather than a spontaneous clash, according to preliminary findings from the National Police. Now, military sources are speaking of soldiers who are unable to use physical force, have no weapons, and are vulnerable to such attacks in the future.
Regarding the ambush, police investigators at the scene discovered an abnormal accumulation of heavy stones that did not match the natural geology of the terrain. Police believe the projectiles were intentionally stockpiled at the location in advance, setting a trap for a vehicle or convoy passing through the area.
Images of damaged military vehicles have gone viral across social media. Multiple vehicles suffered smashed windshields and other damage in the attack.
#URGENTE | Los inmigrantes ilegales de Ceuta han atacado esta madrugada los vehículos de los militares españoles.
Este es el estado de algunos de los coches y camiones del Ejército que les ha ayudado a instalarse en polideportivos. pic.twitter.com/KnT9RU35AM
The ambush occurred while troops from the 54th Regular Group of Ceuta were conducting routine patrol duties. Dozens of illegal immigrants ambushed the patrol vehicle with a heavy barrage of rocks. The sudden intensity of the assault severely damaged the vehicle, shattering its windows and trapping the occupants inside.
Surrounded by a high volume of projectiles, the soldiers “feared for their lives,” according to statements later provided to investigators, as reported by Spanish newspaper El Debate. Four soldiers were left injured and officials told the press that sthe all-terrain logistical vehicles were not armored and not equipped to deal with such attacks.
Marco Antonio Gómez, president of the Association of Spanish Troops and Sailors (ATME), stated that the “very serious aggression” shows “our military is helpless.”
“They go without weapons. Our colleagues had to run away to save their own lives.”
Speaking to El Debate, military sources who are directly on the ground in Ceuta say that soldiers have their “hands and feet tied.”
Although the military is working with National Police, the situation remains dangerous. The source said “they have done what is necessary and have intervened in situations in which the illegal immigrants bothered the inhabitants of Ceuta.”
A young Spanish woman is fleeing Ceuta because she no longer feels safe.
"I don't want to feel anxious every time I step outside… It seems awful to me that all this is allowed to happen and nobody can close the border or do anything."
However, these military sources complain that various legal frameworks have left soldiers without weapons, and these policies also restrict soldiers from carrying out arrests and using any type of force.
Migrants may even be aware of these restrictions, empowering them to conduct ambush strikes against soldiers with near impunity.
5 migrants tried to gang rape a 12-year-old girl as she screamed for help, said locals in Ceuta who stopped the attack.
"There were five against a 12-year-old girl. She was a little girl, they were taking off her pants. She was screaming, screaming, screaming. She was… pic.twitter.com/g97pj8phUR
Since the attack, 12 suspects have been taken into custody at the scene by National Police’s Prevention and Reaction Unit (UPR). Some migrants reportedly tried to evade arrest by jumping into the sea. Reinforcement from the Civil Guard also helped secure the perimeter.
The Union of Military Troops (UMT) issued a statement expressing its “strong rejection and indignation,” stating they had warned about the conditions facing troops already ten days eariler.
The National Police investigation remains active as authorities work to trace all remaining individuals involved in the ambush.
Sven Hüber, the deputy federal chairman of Germany’s Police Union (GdP), has stepped down from his post with immediate effect following public scrutiny regarding his service as a political officer for East Germany’s border guards. Hüber recently made headlines for his stance against the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
The resignation follows investigative reporting by the German media outlet Apollo News alleging that Hüber committed severe abuses at the East German border during the Cold War prior to joining the German Federal Police. The report claims that during his tenure as an SED political officer, Hüber placed a service weapon into the mouth of a captured East German refugee in the “death strip” and physically assaulted the individual while they were pinned to the ground.
Hüber vehemently denied the allegations, framing the coverage as a coordinated effort to dismantle his reputation. In a formal press statement, he characterized the reporting as “defamatory” and a “character assassination,” explaining that his resignation was intended to “avert the daily new, untenable accusations from the GdP during the necessary legal proceedings.”
The finger is also being pointed at right-wing media, with Hüber’s attorney Johannes Eisenberg stating the claims began in “right-wing extremist media and from there overflowing into well-known inflammatory media.” Eisenberg firmly maintained that his client “did not commit the misanthropic acts spread about him there,” adding that Hüber would refrain from further public comment as he prepares to challenge the outlets in court.
The GdP similarly confirmed it plans to pursue criminal and civil legal action against authors and publishers behind what it deems false accusations, targeted threats, and distorted reporting.
Hüber’s tenure at the union had already generated significant friction prior to the recent revelations.
Writing in the official GdP members’ magazine, Hüber recently urged police officers to actively counter a potential AfD administration in Saxony-Anhalt, arguing that “police officers personally take on enemies of the constitution because the oath they take stipulates the same” and asserting that an “AfD seizure of power does not release any civil servant from their oath.”
Since Hüber’s resignation, his anti-AfD article, entitled “Saying a True No,” has been scrubbed from the GdP website, according to Apollo News, but is still archived in the police union’s newsletter.
Regardless of whether the claims about torture prove true or not, Hüber has his own history of reportedly making false allegations against his rivals. He previously faced backlash for attempting to block the lifetime professorship of conservative academic Stephan Maninger at the Federal Police Academy using claims that were ultimately shown to be groundless. Attorney Ralf Höcker subsequently alleged that GdP federal chairman Jochen Kopelke backed Hüber during that campaign, using union membership fees to support the effort.
The controversy triggered a wave of exits within the organization. The Mitteldeutsche Zeitung confirmed that a “low double digits” number of police officers in Saxony-Anhalt severed their union membership following the initial reports.
Hüber finalized his decision to step down following discussions with GdP federal chairman Kopelke. The union has not yet named a replacement to fill the vacant deputy chair position.
A French youth, 19-year-old Constant, was kidnapped, robbed, and beaten so badly by three suspects that he was left in a six-day coma in the hospital in 2025. Now, the case has come once more to the public’s attention after Constant described the attack on French television, including that his assailants were not speaking French when they nearly killed him.
Near dawn on April 12, 2025, 19-year-old Constant was on his way to work when three men changed his life forever. To this day, only one suspect has ever been arrested and convicted.
This French teen was kidnapped on his way to work and beaten into a 6-day coma by suspects who “did not speak French.”
19-year-old Constant, who has been an apprentice butcher since he was 15, was headed to work in Rouen at 5 a.m. when a car stopped near him. The suspects… pic.twitter.com/Y3u8y8qz2z
Constant was a hard-working French teenager, who had been an apprentice butcher since he was 15. Around 5:30 a.m., he left on his electric scooter for a 6:30 a.m. shift, traveling along Boulevard Jean-Jaurès in Petit-Quevilly, near Rouen. A car began following him, then cut him off and blocked the road. Occupants called for him to stop, appearing to need help or simply demanding that he approach. When a truck driver witnessed the scene and tried to intervene, the men threatened him. They forced Constant into the vehicle.
The suspects took him to Grand-Quevilly. Under threat of a knife, they demanded the PIN codes for his phone and bank card. After obtaining them, they beat him almost exclusively on his head. Family members later said the attackers “went after his head,” leaving a shoe tread mark across his face.
Once he was barely conscious, they abandoned him. In a state of shock, Constant managed to walk roughly two kilometers toward home before collapsing. His parents took him to the hospital, where he was also photographed with shoe tread marks across his face.
Constant was admitted to intensive care at CHU Rouen with a skull fracture and a subdural hematoma, then transferred to neurosurgery. Relatives described his head as massively swollen. Later accounts indicate he spent approximately six days in a coma. The attackers stole his e-scooter and phone and withdrew €1,170 from his account.
A witness had already called the police. Officers arrived at the initial scene and found no one. When family members tried to file a complaint the same day, they were told the adult victim would have to do it himself; police later opened an investigation and took his statement at the hospital.
Bank withdrawals allowed police to identify one of the three men. This suspect, who has not been named, was tried in court on Nov. 14, 2025, at the Rouen criminal court and sentenced to four years in prison with immediate detention. He was banned from contacting Constant and ordered to pay damages. He refused to name his two accomplices, who have not been arrested.
Months later, Constant appeared on France 2’s “Ça commence aujourd’hui” with Faustine Bollaert. In the clip that circulated widely in August 2026, he recounted being in the back of the car, being told not to look at the man on his right, and realizing the attackers were not speaking French.
As a result, it is clear that the attackers are not native French citizens, further highlighting the deteriorating security situation in the country due to mass immigration. Countless French youths have been the victim of foreigners over the last years, include Louis, Mégan, Thomas, Lola, and Théo, just to name a few of the victims.
A young German woman from the feminist group Lukreta has posted a video decrying yet another gang rape by foreigners in her country, this time involving three Afghan suspects who are accused of gang raping a 17-year-old girl in Dortmund, filming the rape, and then laughing as they traumatized the victim.
The three men – 20-year-old Quais W., 19-year-old Burhanulla N., and 25-year-old Kambiz H. – are currently on trial in Dortmund Regional Court involving a range of serious charges, including rape and the filming of a pornographic video of a minor.
"Three Afghan men raped a 17-year-old girl in Dortmund, filmed the act, and even laughed while doing so."
A young German woman says the case was "covered neither by public broadcasters nor by the political Left."
The three men reportedly lured the girl to their apartment in September 2024 in the city of Dortmund under a false pretext. However, once in the apartment, the suspects got the girl so intoxicated with alcohol that she lost consciousness.
“During the night, the witness lost consciousness as a result of alcohol consumption. The accused then took advantage of this situation,” said prosecutor Fabian Weishaupt.
The three men then systematically raped the girl and filmed themselves laughing. One of them even opened the unconscious girl’s eyes with his finger.
According to Bild, the three suspects all have extensive criminal records, including robbery, attacks against law enforcement, drug trafficking, assault, and other offenses.
As for the Lukreta feminist group, one of their members stated that the case was “covered neither by public broadcasters nor by the political Left even though it can hardly be surpassed in terms of abnormality and misogyny.”
“The reason, of course, is that the three perpetrators are all of Afghan origin and known to the police,” she said.
In other words, the media and left-wing feminist groups are very careful when perpetrators of such attacks are foreigners, but only because such cases are rapidly fueling the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. The data is also clear. Remix News reported that last year, a record-high number of suspects involved in gang rape were foreigners, reaching 53 percent for the first time.
The young woman from Lukreta also has little faith in the German justice system and questions whether the Afghan men will be deported if convicted, stating: “Whether the three Afghans will even be justly convicted is questionable. What is certain, however, is that in the event of deportation, far-left Antifa activists will be at the airport to prevent the flight of the rapists.”
Polish prosecutors are now investigating a “White Lives Matter” graffiti as a hate crime in the city of Rzeszów, with the suspects facing up to three years in prison if they are apprehended and convicted.
Painted on a wall in the Polish city of Rzeszów, the graffiti was reportedly created as a memorial to the murdered British youth Henry Nowak. Polish police have reportedly secured surveillance footage and referred the case to Polish prosecutors. However, Polish newspaper toRzeszow claims that cameras are not in the direct area where the wall was painted, making it difficult to identify the suspects.
In Poland, prosecutors are now investigating a "White Lives Matter" graffiti as a hate crime, with the suspects facing up to 3 years in prison if they are apprehended and convicted.
Painted on a wall in the Polish city of Rzeszów, the graffiti was reportedly created as a… pic.twitter.com/FP1HYP0cDZ
Major Polish news outlet wPolsce24 has reacted with outrage to the investigation: “The Rzeszów case is part of a broader trend of suppressing the voices of white people who dare to remind them that their lives also have value. When black people say “Black Lives Matter,” it is a fight for equality. When white people say “White Lives Matter,” it is immediately racist.” The news outlet further writes: “The slogan on the garages in Rzeszów was not an expression of hatred. There was a voice reminding us that white lives matters too. And as long as we treat some lives as ‘more equal’ than others, such slogans will appear on walls.”
Meanwhile, authorities claim the graffiti is illegal under article 257 of the Polish penal code, which concerns the public insult of a group of people or an individual based on national, ethnic, or racial identity.
A group labeled “Narodowy Rzeszów” allegedly posted a video of themselves standing next to the graffiti holding a banner and flares and displaying the logo of the right-wing National-Radical Camp (ONR), however, it remains unclear if they sprayed the graffiti themselves. Their post pointed to violence against Whites in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Social media platforms took the video down.
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