About ten thousand Poles gathered and rallied in the streets of Warsaw on Saturday to object against the government's proposed Poland surveillance law plan. The planned changes are feared to restrain the people's privacy and freedom.
Poland surveillance law plan will give the government the freedom to gain access to digital data. This also allows the police to interfere and have greater surveillance over the citizens, Reuters reports. The protesters waved flags that shout "illiberal democracy" as they believed that Poland is following the footsteps of Hungary. Poland's Law and Justice (PiS) party took over in November and since then, it has taken power over of the media and the judiciary.
"Our privacy, intimacy is under threat, we can be followed, watched over both in our homes, and online," said Mateusz Kijowski, one of the leaders of the Committee for the Defense of Democracy.
The Poles demanded the withdrawal of the changes to Poland surveillance law plan. The presiding party claimed that they needed to change the law to execute a constitutional court ruling. Critics believed that the Poland's government is following Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban's rule of limiting the democratic freedom of the citizens. The European Union (EU) has since been alarmed that it started investigating if Warsaw is threatening the EU democratic principles, Press TV.IR reported.
According to Canadaka.Net, the EU is assessing the current incident, whether the Poland government has violated the bloc's principle of the rule of law. Just this week, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo claimed that her government had not violated any EU or Polish laws. However, if the EU finds any infringement, Poland's voting rights will be suspended in the 28-nation bloc. She also said that there's a mandate to revamp the Poland's laws.
The protest is the most recent among the series of rallies after the right-wing government that was elected last November. Critics believed that the Poland surveillance law plan is one of the anti-democratic policies being introduced by the present government.
