Bąkiewicz arrested in Berlin at Stone of Remembrance – police explain
Berlin police detained six members of the Border Defence Movement, including Robert Bąkiewicz, after an attempted march with a cross to the Polish memorial. They face a maximum fine.
Berlin police: those detained violated assembly law
On Tuesday 16 June, a group of approximately 15 members of the Border Defence Movement (ROG) led by Robert Bąkiewicz gathered in a park in front of the Reichstag in Berlin. According to dw.com, participants in yellow vests, carrying a large wooden cross and holding banners, intended to march to the Stone of Remembrance for Poland 1939–1945 – a temporary memorial commemorating Polish victims of the Second World War and German occupation.
In accordance with a statement from Berlin police, shortly before 16:00 officers prohibited the group from marching to the memorial site. They were offered instead – through a Polish-speaking person – "to organise an assembly in the nearby Skulpturenpark or to approach the memorial site individually".
When the group, despite the prohibition, proceeded together with the cross and banners towards the monument, police officers applied measures restricting the freedom of six individuals. "Because resistance occurred in the process, our police forces also applied coercive measures," Berlin police explained. After the completion of procedures, all detained individuals were released on site.
In recordings published on social media, scuffles with police officers can be seen, as well as handcuffs being applied to some participants – including Bąkiewicz.
What do the detainees face?
A spokesperson for Berlin police told Deutsche Welle that those who resisted would be answerable for violations of the inviolability of public officials. The remaining individuals, who continued the march without resistance, violated Berlin's assembly freedom law. "However, this is merely an infraction, not a criminal offence," the spokesperson noted. For a violation of assembly regulations alone, they face "a maximum fine".
Police further explained that the assembly could have taken place in the immediate vicinity of the Stone of Remembrance – behind the stone there is a green space where participants could stand and then individually approach the memorial site.
Reactions in Poland
The incident was addressed by Foreign Ministry spokesman Maciej Wewiór. "Regarding the incident in Berlin: our consul is on site taking action – he is currently establishing the circumstances of the incident and reasons for the detention," he wrote on the X platform.
Bąkiewicz himself appealed on X to the Polish embassy in Berlin: "We call on the Polish ambassador in Germany to intervene urgently. We have been deprived of our freedom by Germans. Force may be used against us. We have not broken the law." In a published recording, he explained that Border Defence Movement members had not organised an assembly, but wanted to "pray by the stone, a 30-tonne stone which the Germans set up for Poles 86 years later as reparations". On Telewizja Republika he stated that the police intervention was "a scandal", and that Germans fear the content of the commemorative plaques.
The intervention was commented on by PiS chairman Jarosław Kaczyński, who said the incident revealed the German authorities' attitude towards Poles. Kaczyński in the same post addressed the planned Polish-German defence cooperation agreement, questioning the actions of the embassy and Foreign Ministry.
Defence agreement in the shadow of the incident
One day after the Berlin incident, on 17 June in Warsaw, defence ministers of Poland and Germany – Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz and Boris Pistorius – signed an agreement on cooperation in the field of defence. The document includes among other things joint exercises and military mobility, but does not contain provisions on security guarantees analogous to treaties which Poland concluded with France and the United Kingdom. The signing date is not coincidental: exactly 35 years earlier, Germany and Poland signed a treaty on good neighbourliness and friendly cooperation.
Source: Google News PL — Crime (pl)