04 August 2006 :

Europe's main human rights watchdog told Polish President Lech Kaczynski his support for restoring the death penalty was an attack on European values and would breach Poland's treaty obligations.
"In our view, the death penalty has no place in the criminal justice system of any modern, civilised country," Rene van der Linden, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, said in an open letter to Kaczynski. The letter followed comments from the conservative Kaczynski on Polish radio last week, expressing support for the death penalty in cases of murder.
On August 2, the European Commission rejected Kaczynski's views as incompatible with European values. Van der Linden said restoration of the death penalty, which was abolished in Poland soon after the fall of communism in 1989, "would constitute a flagrant breach of a country's obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights".
"Its reintroduction would thus be completely incompatible with membership of our organisation."
Kaczynski, whose twin brother Jaroslaw is prime minister, has taken no formal steps to reintroduce the death penalty but junior coalition partner, the nationalist League of Polish Families, has said it will push for a referendum on the issue.
Van der Linden said the abolition of the death penalty in Europe had been one of the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe's greatest achievements and was one of its central policies. He said the Parliamentary Assembly, made up of deputies from across Europe, would continue to follow developments closely.
"In the light of these concerns, I hope that you will now see fit to reconsider your position and to retract your proposal," he said.

11 August 2006 :

Undersecretary of State at the Presidential Chancellery Andrzej Krawczyk has written to Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly head Rene van der Linden that President Lech Kaczynski had not presented any initiative of reintroducing the death penalty in Poland.
According to Secretary of State at the Presidential Chancellery Maciej Lopinski, the letter sent on August 8 was a reply to a last week's appeal by the Council of Europe head for "withdrawing the President's proposal to restore the death penalty". "I would like to inform that the Polish President submitted no motion to reinstate the death penalty. In this case your postulate for the withdrawal of the President's proposal is groundless," Krawczyk wrote. Van der Linden's appeal followed a 28 July radio interview by Kaczynski who declared he had always supported the death penalty. According to the president, the lack of such punishment "gave criminals an immeasurable advantage over their victims".
"This should be discussed in Europe. I think that with time Europe will change its mind on this. European civilization has paths leading us into the future, but it also has blind alleys, and this is one," Kaczynski said in the interview.

12 December 2006 :

the photographic exhibit “Thinking is forbidden – the Faces of Repression in Cuba” realised by Oliviero Toscani for Hands Off Cain is currently being held in Warsaw.
Members of the public can walk among 39 giant sized photographs – graphic elaborations of political prisoners and that of Fidel Castro – at the large former industrial space of club M25.
The exhibit highlights the plight of political dissidents arrested in Cuba in March 2003 and harshly sentenced following on charges of treason and political conspiracy.
The Polish edition of the show, set up in collaboration with the Polish Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, was inaugurated in the presence of eleven NGOs involved in the fight for human rights in Cuba.   

01 September 2006 :

it was reported that the right-wing League of Polish Families party (LPR) wished to bring back capital punishment for sexually-related child murder.