2024-10-23 14:59 update: 2024-10-24, 15:11
Independence March. Photo PAP/Paweł Supernak
After initial rejection, Warsaw City Hall has eventually allowed the far-right association organising the annual march to mark Poland's Independence Day to hold a gathering along its traditional route through the city centre.
Bartosz Malewski, the head of the Independence March association, wrote on the X platform on Wednesday that the event will be organised as "a legal gathering," which was later confirmed by Monika Beuth, a Warsaw City Hall spokesperson.
"As previously announced by the mayor, a duly submitted application, which did not raise any legal doubts, was registered as any other gathering," Beuth told PAP.
Last week, the city hall denied a permit for the event due to prematurely filed overlapping notices. The authority argued it could not determine the exact scope of the event and that the proposed duration (initially 16 days) would severely disrupt the city's functioning and emergency services.
The association then vowed to appeal the decision, arguing that it represented "an attack on the right of tens of thousands of patriots to celebrate Poland's independence in Warsaw."
The rally held in Warsaw every year to mark Poland's Independence Day on November 11 has become a high-profile spectacle for ultra-nationalist groups in Poland and has often been marred by incidents of far-right violence and hate speech.
In the past years, the association had organised the Independence March as a cyclical event. Currently, it does not have permission for such a form of gathering because the Mazowieckie province governor has issued two decisions refusing to grant the rally the cyclical assembly status, which would mean that other marches cannot take place at the same time and the same place. (PAP)
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