ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dominika Bychawska-Siniarska

Dominika Bychawska-Siniarska is a human rights lawyer specializing in freedom of expression in Poland and central and eastern Europe and is a member of the board of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights and the European Implementation Network.

POSTS BY Dominika Bychawska-Siniarska

14 December 2020

Filling the Polish ECtHR judgeship – risking (another) empty seat?

The Polish judgeship at the ECtHR must be filled, as the term of Judge Krzysztof Wojtyczek is due to expire on 31 October 2021. The Polish Government has submitted a list of three candidates. Due to the lack of fairmess, inclusiveness and transparency of the procedure, it is likely that the seat of the Polish judge will remain vacant. Continue reading >>

14 May 2019

Dominika Bychawska-Siniarska

Offence Intended – Virgin Mary With a Rainbow Halo as Freedom of Expression

The news that a 51-year-old activist, Ms Elżbieta Podleśna, was detained and interrogated by Polish authorities shocked the public in Poland. She is charged under Poland's "blasphemy law" for allegedly putting up posters of the Virgin Mary with a rainbow halo. This latest example of Polish authorities prosecuting cases of religious insults illustrates the incompatibility of Poland’s “blasphemy law” with European human rights guarantees, in particular the freedom of expression. Continue reading >>

06 December 2017

Dominika Bychawska-Siniarska

Criticizing the new President of the Polish Constitutional Court: A Crime against the State?

L'état c'est moi. Thus said France’s Louis XIV, and thus seems to think of herself Julia Przyłębska – since the 2016 “coup” against the Constitutional Court in Poland, she is the President of that Court, de facto appointed to the post by the man who runs Poland these days, Jarosław Kaczyński. Last October a Polish oppositional daily, Gazeta Wyborcza, described how she allegedly colluded with the Polish State security in the pursuit of her position at the Constitutional Court. Przyłębska tried to defend herself by using criminal-law instruments otherwise designed to protect the State. "By attacking me, you attack the State,” she seems to suggest. Continue reading >>

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