After a break in live-audience football games caused by the epidemic, racist slogans and banners have returned to stadiums. The ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association noted a surge in activity of those who use football to manifest their endorsement of Janusz Walus, a Polish-born far-right activist serving a life sentence for a racist murder in the Republic of South Africa.
During a top flight
match between teams Lechia Gdansk and Legia
Warszawa (15 July), hooligans from Gdansk again displayed a banner
with Walus’s name and picture and the slogan ‘Nothing will break
you, you’re not alone’ and faced no consequences. No disciplinary
action was taken by the Polish football authorities despite this
being yet another display of racist propaganda in the Lechia Gdansk
stadium. The city authorities, who financially support Lechia and
rent out the stadium in question, have also failed to react.
In 1993, Walus murdered Chris Hani, a Black
politician who fought to end the apartheid in South Africa. The
assassin was a member of racist organizations. He was sentenced to
the death penalty, subsequently changed to a life sentence (capital
punishment was abolished in South Africa in 1995). The murder,
plotted by the far-right, was intended to start a civil war. The list
of future potential victims of Walus included Nelson Mandela.
- ‘It is astounding that football hooligans can
display support for a racist murderer at Polish stadiums unpunished.
Slogans and flags bearing praise for Walus have been appearing on the
stands for a couple of years now’ - comment representatives of the
‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association. – ‘After a short summer break
matches will recommence on 22 August. Let’s hope things will
change’.
‘NEVER AGAIN’ activists note that, in contrast
to many sports clubs worldwide, Polish clubs have not supported the
international anti-racist campaign Black Lives Matter. An exception
was a fourth division club Polonia Sroda Wielkopolska – its players
knelt on the pitch and thus honored the memory of George Floyd, a
Black American killed by a police officer. Under a short note
published on 5 June
on Polonia’s Twitter profile, which included a picture of the
footballers and an invitation to other clubs to join the campaign,
almost all the comments were negative and vulgar, including: ‘whack
yourselves in the head’, ‘I see you bambers [Poles who descended
from Germans, now living in the Poznan area – translator’s note]
are f.cked up’, ‘please untag Legia and don’t involve it in
this pathology’, ‘don’t even try to include Lech Poznan in this
sick campaign’, ‘go kiss n.gro’s shoes’, ‘you’re f.cked
up. I hope that n.gros destroy your asses’, ‘F.ck, my city made
such an embarrassment of itself’, ‘Shame for all of Sroda
Wielkopolska and its inhabitants’.
‘NEVER AGAIN’ has led the ‘Let’s kick
racism out of the stadiums’ campaign since the mid-1990s. Its
originator was the late Marcin Kornak (1968-2014), the president of
the Association for many years. The campaign aims to fight racism and
discrimination in football. An important part of the campaign is
monitoring racist incidents and informing the public about them.
In recent years and months, the ‘NEVER AGAIN’
Association noted many banners and flags flown during matches,
displaying praise for Janusz Walus. These
were exhibited by hooligans from many clubs including Rakow
Czestochowa, Chelmianka Chelm, Pogon Szczecin and Legia Warszawa,
among others. A real scandal occured on 21
March 2019 during a UEFA European Championship qualification game in
Vienna between the Austrian and Polish national teams. Polish
hooligans associated with Wisla Plock displayed a banner calling for
‘Freedom for Janusz Walus’ with a photo of the murderer. The
match was played on the International Day for the Elimination of
Racial Discrimination, proclaimed by the United Nations to
commemorate victims of the racist apartheid system.
In Poland, sympathizers of extreme nationalism
publicly support Walus also away from the context of sports, for
example at street demonstrations. On 1 March 2020 in Bydgoszcz, a
march to honor the memory of the
so called ‘Cursed Soldiers’ (a group of anti-communist guerrillas
which operated in Poland after 1945)
was held and its participants
carried banners saying: ‘Janusz Walus. The last of the Cursed
Soldiers’ and ‘Death to the enemies of the homeland’ (a slogan
calling for ideologically-motivated violence). The march was headed
by the city council member Jerzy Mickus, a member of the Zawisza
Football Association’s board (a local football club).
Another march took place on 18 July 2020 in
Katowice, where participants, including members of the National
Radical Camp (ONR), shouted out ‘Janusz Walus is our role model’,
as well as ‘Death to the enemies of the homeland’ and ‘We will
abolish democracy’. They also displayed banners with slogans: ‘It
is ok to stay white’ and ‘National Cleansing Front’ along with
the Celtic cross – a racist symbol. The demonstrators carried a
flag with a Nazi symbol called the Black Sun.
The popularity of Walus is also expressed in
gadgets sold on the internet. For example, on the Polish online sales
platform OLX one can purchase fan stickers with the name of the
murderer and slogans commending his actions. OLX belongs to a South
African media and technological internet group, Naspers. For many
years, the company had actively supported propaganda upholding the
apartheid. However, sales of items praising Walus are being removed
from another major online sales platform, Allegro (previously also
owned by Naspers), thanks to the intervention of the ‘NEVER AGAIN’
Association.
On 16 March 2020, the Minister of Justice of South
Africa, Ronald Lamola, upheld the decision of his predecessor and
denied Walus parole. Walus never expressed full remorse for his
crime.
Polish members of parliament, tied to extremist
nationalist circles, have campaigned for Walus’s release. In May
2016, MP Robert Winnicki (former leader of the far-right group
All-Polish Youth and currently member of the Confederation party)
filed a letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in which he
demanded the Polish government take ‘appropriate steps to negotiate
the immediate release of Janusz Walus’ and arrange his return to
Poland. Similar requests calling for government intervention were
submitted by other right-wing MPs, Tomasz Rzymkowski, Bartosz Jozwiak
and Sylwester Chruszcz.
The ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association is an
independent organization established in Warsaw in 1996. It has
campaigned against racism, antisemitism and xenophobia, for peace,
intercultural dialogue and human rights both in Poland and
internationally.
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