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Darum boykottiert Ela die Volksabstimmungen in Polen (original)
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Por qué Ela boicotea los plebiscitos en Polonia
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Ativista da democracia boicota votações na Polônia
中文
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波兰人为什么不愿意参加全民公决
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لهذه الأسباب ستقاطع إيلا الاقتراع الشعبي في بولندا
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En Pologne, référendum ne rime pas forcément avec démocratie
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Почему Эльжбета Кужелевска скептически относится к референдуму?
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ポーランド国民投票は直接民主制の乱用?政治学者が棄権する理由
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Perché un'esperta di democrazia boicotta i referendum in Polonia
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Overnight, an almost four-metre-high mobile alarm clock was brought to Rynek Kościuszki, Bialystok's market square. A digital display shows the days, hours, minutes and seconds until the polls close in Poland. A written warning on the installation reads:“Nie śpij, bo cię przegłosują” (“Don't sleep, or others will decide for you”).
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“Our municipal authorities are seeking to motivate citizens to participate with this campaign. We're facing a very important election for democracy in Poland,” says Elzbieta Kuzelewska, a law professor, looking anxiously at the huge posters with portraits of candidates for the province of Podlaskie hung on the fronts of houses all around.
The massive alarm clock counting down to the October 15 vote. Bruno Kaufmann /SRF
This northeastern Polish province, called a voivodeship, borders Belarus, Lithuania and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. But there are also issues at stake that affect the entire nation. Four referendums are about to take place.
The four questions up for vote
“Do you support the selling off of state assets to foreign entities, leading to the loss of Poles' control over strategic sectors of the economy?” “Do you support an increase in the retirement age, including the restoration of the increased retirement age to 67 for men and women?” “Do you support the removal of the barrier on the border between the Republic of Poland and the Republic of Belarus?” “Do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa, in accordance with the forced relocation mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy?”
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Kuzelewska was born here, in the very east of present-day Poland, into a Polish Orthodox family in 1973. She soon became aware she was growing up in a special part of a country where, elsewhere, Roman Catholics are heavily dominant.“Our neighbours included Tatar Muslims, Lithuanian Jews and Belarusian Orthodox,” she says.
In Poland's dramatic history, ethnic groups have been repeatedly oppressed, deported and murdered. Today, Bialystok's Sybir Memorial Museum, which opened in 2021, bears witness to this. It is housed in the former Poleski railway station, from where tens of thousands of people were deported to the Soviet gulags in the east and to the Nazi concentration camps in the west during the Second World War.
The Sybir Memorial Museum: a monument to the tens of thousands forcibly deported during the Second World War. Creative Commons 4.0 / Jan Szewczyk
As a young law student, Kuzelewska took an interest in legal frameworks for the peaceful and democratic coexistence of different cultures and peoples. On a first hitchhiking trip west with her then boyfriend (and now husband) Dariusz, she made a discovery that changed her life.“In southern Poland, a young man gave us a lift on a country road and explained that he was going to Switzerland for a few weeks, and he asked if we'd like to come along. We saw the Matterhorn and beautiful mountain lakes, but also posters for referendums, and we heard about the Landsgemeinden,” she says, referring to open-air assemblies.
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