Ok, I’m printing this entire story off the CBC website, because it’s too ridiculous to keep in the dark…
POLISH COURT CONVICTS COLUMNIST FOR INSULTING POPE Last Updated Tuesday, 25th of January 2005 17:23:55 EST
A court in Warsaw on Tuesday convicted Jerzy Urban, 71, of publicly insulting a head of state in a satirical opinion piece published before the Pope visited his homeland in August 2002. The pope heads the Vatican, formally an independent state.
Urban, a government spokesperson in the communist era who now publishes a weekly newspaper, compared John Paul to a former Soviet leader.
He called the Pope “the Brezhnev of the Vatican” and an “impotent old man” in a column titled “Walking Sadomasochism.”
It sparked mass outrage in the staunchly Catholic country, spurring authorities to press charges.
“The court has no doubt that, intending to ridicule the church, Jerzy Urban ridiculed and derided the Pope,” Judge Barbara Laskowska wrote in her ruling.
“Publishing the story at that time was an intended provocation by Jerzy Urban and was a scandal.”
Urban had argued that he was exercising his freedom of expression when he wrote the article.
“I did it not only to get media attention, but also to provoke protests,” Urban said after the verdict. “The point was to not allow the church and the Pope to be free from criticism in Poland.”
The court’s decision will likely amplify international concerns that Poland, which became a member of the European Union in May, is cracking down on Western-style press freedoms.
Both the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and Reporters Without Borders have cited Urban’s case in warning that Poland may be eroding freedoms of speech.
This is absolutely stupid — beyond retarded! And my mother wants to know why I’m not interested in visiting the homeland of my ancestors???
Reasons: 1—it’s still consumed with its backward, primitive, ultra-Catholic identity; 2—they seem to spend more money and effort building churches than repairing their broken, subsistence agricultural economy; 3—they seek to puff up their historical sense of persecution and past-glories-renewed by being one of George W. Bush’s bitchiest of bitch-boy, boot-licking allies.
And now this travesty against free speech? Let’s be perfectly clear: the Pope is the supreme dictator of a theocratic state that seeks to impose its 16th century mind-set and morality on a world that has evolved far beyond the blinkered vision of an old man who keeps the head of the inquisition as his chief ally, and professes to deny that priests could be capable of molesting children.
As a Canadian, I can write such things without being fined. As a member of the European Union, Poland should respect the same right. If it doesn’t, then it doesn’t deserve to be a member of such a large, democratic organization.
Poland…pull yourself OUT of the 16th century! You make me embarrassed to be descended from such a primitive, cultural mind-set.
