Swastika – 'symbol of happiness'?

photo - Agon S. Buchholz/Wikimedia Commons/CC

Angry local Civic Platform MP Robert Tyszkiewicz called the decision taken this week by a prosecutor in the eastern city of Bialystok not to luanch an investigation into the swastika daubed on an electricity transformer, despite complaints lodged by residents, “a joke”.

The prosecutor said that the swastika could be interpreted, not as symbol of Nazism and the Holocaust but a Hindu symbol of “happiness and prosperity”.

MP Tyskiewicz referred the case to Poland's Attorney General Andrzej Seremet.

“I have no evidence that the prosecutor had any links with nationalists, but a person looking at the situation from the outside could get that impression,” Tyskiewicz told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

After a media storm over the case, the chief prosecutor in Bialystok – an area which has seen several cases of hate crimes – overturned the original decision, saying it was "flawed" and proceedings will go ahead.

This year a mixed race couple and two Chechen families were attacked in separate incidents at a housing estate in the city when their homes were set ablaze as they were sleeping inside.

Interior minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz said the situation in the city had got so bad that the government was treating it as “a training ground for anti-racism”.

Meanwhile, a court in Chorzów in southern Poland acquitted a man on Wednesday after he walked around the city wearing a swastika t-shirt.

Though the judge said the behaviour of Piotr P was reprehensible it “did not promote fascism”.

Piotr P (surname withheld under Poland's privacy laws), who had been drinking alcohol at the time, said he wore the offensive t-shirt to “see what reaction he would get”.

It is illegal to display symbols in Poland which promote totalitarianism, with penalties ranging from fines to two years imprisonment. (pg)