Polish public relations

Once upon a time, Poland used to get good international press coverage. But recently the headlines have mostly been negative. What’s going wrong with Poland’s international image?

Headlines in the international newspapers scream at the injustice of gays denied the right to demonstrate, and then get beaten up when they do. A couple of weeks ago a demonstration in Poznan, organized by the Campaign Against Homophobia, was banned by the local council. When gays and lesbians went ahead with the march, as they did in Warsaw this summer when the same thing happened, police treated the demonstrators roughly and several were arrested. Now the British MEP, Sarah Ludford, has called on Brussels to take legal action against the government if it does not do more to protect the rights of all its citizens, be the gay or straight.

In another shock horror headline, human rights campaigners suspect Poland is hosting secret CIA torture camps; and in another story, western Europeans fret that Poland might welcome, in the near future, American, Son of Star Wars, anti-ballistic missile systems on its soil.

So what’s gone wrong? Poland used to get good international press coverage. Poles were the brave fighters who fought the Nazis tooth and nail, and then, with a little help from the Polish Pope and the Solidarity movement, they helped bring down communism. Poles were then welcomed into the European Union and NATO with open arms.

But that good will has worn a bit thin, on this side of the Atlantic anyway. Now Poland is starting to be seen in Western Europe as a dangerously bigoted country and America’s Central European poodle.

But I would argue that much of this press coverage is based on a few outdated stereotypes and a simplification of what is a complex nation.

It’s true that many of Poland’s representatives in both the domestic and European parliaments hold views that seem antiquated and very strange to people in Western Europe. As British MEP Michael Cashman commented when confronted by the new intake of Polish MEPs who want to ban abortion in the EU, ban homosexuality, and much more besides, we are having to fight battles which we thought we had won back in the nineteen sixties.

And that’s true – we are. In the 1960’s, when young people in the rest of the world were marching in the streets demanding civil rights for women, blacks, gays etc, students in Warsaw were trying to avoid being beaten over the head by police and the militia because they wanted basic rights like freedom of speech. The civil rights movement in Poland never happened. And we have had to wait till today for those battles to begin.

But I wouldn’t want to present Poland as a country where everyone still has these types of prejudices and is deeply religious. About half the population is secular and are as disturbed by the antiquated views of many politicians and others here as you might be.

And so on to the Son of Star Wars missile system. This is the system whereby radar – in two bases in the US and probably one somewhere in Europe - would pick up any incoming missiles and would blast them out of the sky. That’s the theory anyway. In practice, in the tests they have had so far, they are having a bit of a problem hitting anything at all, let along incoming missiles.

It emerged recently that Poland has been having talks about having Star Wars II on its soil for years.

Prime Minister, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz said last week: “We will analyze everything thoroughly and at the appropriate moment say whether it is good or not for Poland,” He has promised that, before any final decision is reached, a thorough public debate will take place first.

But Poland is not alone in looking at this system. The Czech Republic and Hungary are also looking at the plans, and the UK supports the general idea of a system being set up in Europe.

As far as the claims that there are secret CIA camps in Poland, I have argued on Radio Polonia before that the often hysterical claims about these camps do not match the evidence. Just because we know that planes used by the CIA for transporting terror suspects landed in Poland – which we do know because the flight logs have been leaked by someone to the press - does not prove anything at all, apart from the fact that the planes have been using a northern Polish airstrip to land on.

And we now know that the CIA has been using many countries to do this in, not just Poland, but Denmark, Spain, Holland, Italy, the UK…. But nobody has suggested, like one Turkish writer has done, that the UK or Holland are the home of a ‘US Auschwitz’.

I wonder why? Perhaps these writers are being informed by some antiquated prejudices of their own – if Poland and other Central European countries had a death camps on their soil once, then they could have them now.

Last Friday, Dick Marty, the Swiss senator heading the investigation on behalf of the Council of Europe, said that the prospect of large clandestine torture camps in Central Europe was ‘highly unlikely’, though he did think that is possible that ”there were detainees that stayed 10, 15 or 30 days. We do not have the full picture."

So though much of Poland’s bad press coverage is based on what are basically conspiracy theories and simplistic notions of what is a complex country, I would suggest that Poland does need a new PR manager to explain some of the more subtler issues and traits of Poland and the Polish character.

Now Poland is starting to be seen in Western Europe as a dangerously bigoted country and America’s Central European poodle.

Their is a lot of topics that could be discussed in this article. The main thing that strikes me is the Anti-America thread winding through the article. Rather than discuss Poland's tendency through the school of hard knocks to lean towards the right much like main strem America (It could well be mentioned that America also bore the brunt of this past centuries fighting), they are attacked by being called "America's poodle".

This is a typical name-calling/no substance response which appeals to youngsters who haven't experienced enough of the world to understand it's intricacies and are swayed by a catchy sound byte.

When Poland shows a willingness to allow advanced military technology on their soil, it isn't pointed out that Poland's recent past gives it great reason to advance militarily so they can protect themselves in the future.

The author pins Poland's so-called 'image problem' on outdated Old-europe stereotypes of the country. This is partly correct, but not quite how the author paints it.

A better analogy would be the rude awakening Old-Europe was given when W. was re-elected and it suddenly dawned on them that maybe America truly was as right leaning as they had refused to believe.

They are in for another rude awakening when it comes to Poland, Poland is not a babe in the woods cut from the same panzy socialist cloth as they are, but in fact has a much more mature world view than they do as a result of their many years of struggles.

Well, that was more than I intended to write on the subject, but once I got started the words just flowed. Sorry :)

What a disgustingly biased article. They make it sound like Poland is still living in the middle ages because it didn't have hippies. And his comment:

Poland used to get good international press coverage

is bull**it. Poland never gets good press from the West because it is a conservative nation. His article is a great example.

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