The Warsaw-Praga District Prosecutor’s Office has refused to open an investigation into the display of red-and-black OUN-UPA flags during a concert by Belarusian rapper Maks Korzh, ruling that the incident did not constitute a criminal offence.
According to prosecutor Karolina Staros, spokesperson for the Warsaw-Praga office, eight separate complaints were filed over the matter, all of which were attached to the original report submitted by the National Stadium operator.
The authorities examined whether the presence of the flags that are historically associated with the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) could be considered public promotion of fascist or other totalitarian ideologies. However, investigators concluded that those carrying the banners had not acted with the intention of propagating Nazi or fascist ideas.
The issue drew political attention after PiS MP Dariusz Matecki publicised the incident and announced he would refer it to prosecutors.
The concert, held at Warsaw’s National Stadium in early August, was marred by significant disturbances. Police detained 109 people for offences including drug possession, assaulting security staff, use of pyrotechnics, and unauthorised entry to the venue. Fifty individuals were fined a total of around 11,500 złotys, while 38 cases were referred to court.
Among those detained were 63 foreign nationals. Fourteen were deported (12 Ukrainians and two Belarusians), 13 left Poland voluntarily, and proceedings were launched against three more. A further 33 foreigners were entered into Poland’s register of undesirable persons and flagged in the Schengen Information System, effectively barring their return to EU territory on security grounds.
The Border Guard completed proceedings against the detained foreigners on 9 September.
Preventing the promotion of Bandera ideology and the denial of the Volhynia massacre is the aim of amendments to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance and to the Criminal Code, that was recently submitted to the Polish parliament by President Karol Nawrocki.
According to the explanatory memorandum, the amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation seeks to “clarify the provisions defining crimes committed by members and collaborators of the Bandera faction of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), as well as other Ukrainian formations collaborating with the Third German Reich”, to counter the spread of false claims on the subject.
“The proposed change will contribute to more effective prosecution of those who deny the commission of genocide crimes perpetrated by the Bandera faction of the OUN and by the UPA,” the justification of the draft project states.
The amendment to the Act is also linked to planned changes in the Criminal Code. These include expanding the article that currently provides for up to three years’ imprisonment for promoting totalitarian systems or inciting hatred.
The revision would add the following clause: “The same penalty shall apply to anyone who publicly promotes (…) the ideology of the Bandera faction of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or any ideology calling for the use of violence to influence political or social life.”
Source: PAP
Photo: @KieckaM/X
Tomasz Modrzejewski
