[REMIX via Zero] Poland’s public television news stations went off the air yesterday as police conducted massive raids to seize public news station TVP, with fears becoming realized that Prime Minister Donald Tusk would move quickly to crack down on press freedoms once he assumed power.
A group of senior Law and Justice (PiS) politicians, including party leader Jarosław Kaczyński and former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, arrived at the headquarters of state-run TV broadcaster TVP on Wednesday afternoon as the new pro-EU government moved to seize control of state-run press in dramatic authoritarian fashion.
PiS politicians compared the action to the introduction of martial law in Poland in 1981 in the sense that the government then also shut down TV programs and dismissed scores of journalists.
There was outrage too at an incident in which a female MP from PiS was assaulted by one of the bodyguards who assisted the new chairman of the TVP Board in taking over an office at TVP. |