Kudos to Mr. Marek Nazarko and residents of the commune Michałowo

Dear Deputy Mayor, [Konrad Sikora – wiceburmistrz gminy Michałowo],

Dear Members, [Magdalena Adamowicz],

Dear Mrs President, [Aleksandra Dulkiewicz – prezydent Gdańska],

Dear Mr President, [Jacek Sutryk – prezydent Wrocławia],

Dear Executive Director of ICORN, [Helge Lunde],

Woman and man,

“We thank the Paweł Adamowicz Prize Chapter, City of Gdańsk, EU Regional Committee and ICORN for accepting the nominations submitted by Kraków and Wrocław: UNESCO City of Literature, city of ICORN. It is an honor to be able, on behalf of Prof. Jacek Majchrowski, The President of Kraków and present here with Jacek Sutryk, Mayor of Wrocław, joined us to recite the praises in honor of the winners.

This ceremony at the European Solidarity Center is very important to us. Both Wrocław and Kraków identify with European values ​​of solidarity – through their institutional activities and history. Krakow was the first city in our country to join the ICORN network in 2011, in time for the centenary of the birth of Czesław Miłosz. In the City Council meeting room, Native European scraps and Notes on exile resounded at the time – timeless texts addressing the existential dimensions of exile.

The Wrocław ECoC 2016 program is built on the values ​​of solidarity and shared responsibility, and the inclusive and anti-discriminatory policies that result directly from them. We stand here with Katarzyna Janusik, Deputy Director of the Wrocław Literary House, an institution whose mission is embodied in the idea of ​​solidarity, which, similar to Kraków and the city of Gdańsk, runs a residency program for persecuted artists. These cities are cities of refuge, where human rights are respected, and whose complex identities result from the waves of migration and refugees that have created them over the centuries. Today, we can call them not refugees, but linguists prof. Jerzy Bralczyk – immigrants, that is, those who fled – came – took something of value with them and let us learn something about ourselves.

The Bab Paweł Adamowicz award is the nomination for residents of the Polish-Belarusian border – Michałowo commune, represented by Mr. Konrad Sikora, deputy mayor of the commune, who was here. I’m using the term “Borderland” here in a different sense from the common understanding of edges, margins, borders, and borders. Because we can also understand Borderland symbolically – as the experience of border conventionality inscribed in identity, and thus – the priority treatment of universal values. In this sense, today, especially today, Pogranicze is at the center of the European debate about solidarity and the values ​​that underlie the idea of ​​the Prize.

Today, the border has another side and its opposite. This is the social radicalism that has been reborn in recent years. They feed on tension, fear, confrontational and arbitrary boundary setting. Krzysztof Czyżewski, one of the founders of the “Pogranicze” center in Sejny, writes in his book Xenopolis: “We have torn down the Berlin Wall, opened up borders, popularized the Internet, and most of us live in a multicultural metropolis. But the wall remains people’s lived experience.” Modern Europe. Faced with a growing wave of immigrants, and perhaps above all given the increasingly weak center of what is considered our own, we are beginning to rebuild walls, fences, barbed wire, including along nation-state borders. . (…) walls today grow within our communities.”

On September 2, 2021, at the request of the Council of Ministers, the President of Poland imposed a state of emergency on the border between Belarus and the European Union. Similar decisions were made by the Lithuanian and Latvian governments. It was the response of these countries to the intentional transfer of immigrants and refugees by the President of Belarus, e.g. from Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries in the Middle East and Africa through the Polish-Belarusian border, but also through the borders with Lithuania and Latvia. Despite the cynicism of Alexander Lukashenko’s plan, thousands of new arrivals from countries affected by many humanitarian crises are fooled by the promise of routes to Western Europe. In fact, they are trapped.

The Polish authorities and their subordinate services, instead of subjecting people stuck in the border areas to standard procedures for verifying asylum applications regulated by international law, began forcing these people back into Belarusian territory. Illegal push-backs have become an everyday practice used by Polish and Belarusian services. Reports from the border on both sides are full of images of inhumane treatment, beatings, abuse, leaving refugees, including mothers with children, in the jungle in the cold, hindering legal and medical aid. This is a drama that has a lot of casualties. Due to the state of emergency imposed, media are not allowed to enter the venue, we still don’t know everything.

Fortunately for some of these people, the fact that they found themselves in the Border space, that is. among people for whom openness and empathy are directly inscribed in their cultural identity. Michałowo Commune and its authorities turned out to be such a community. Mayor Marek Nazarko has run the commune for 20 years. The continuity of this office indicates his authority and social mandate, which is very important in the context of subsequent events.

On 27 September 2021, approximately 20 Iraqi Yazidis, mostly women and children, arrived at the Border Guard post in Michałów. They asked for asylum, but the next day they were all pushed back to the border. Question: Where are the children from Michałów? picked up by the media and many organizations circulating throughout Poland. Under these circumstances, at a session of the Michałów City Council, Mayor Marek Nazarko proposed creating Help Points for those in need, where people could find clothes, hot food and accommodation. Council members almost unanimously supported the mayor’s proposal and the point went into operation on October 4. Local residents immediately joined the organization.

Gradually, close cooperation developed between the mayor, the Mała Ojczyzna Foundation, Maria Ancipiuk, who worked closely with the commune, and firefighters from the Volunteer Fire Department. Gifts and aid began pouring in from all over Poland. Mayor Nazarko invited local government officials from Poland, who signed a joint statement with the Government of the Republic of Poland in Michałów. Wherever he could, he warned about the crisis on the eastern border. Despite numerous attempts to go against the commune authorities with the service, Marek Nazarko has publicly declared cooperation.

The months-long state of emergency, the lack of response from central authorities to requests for assistance in resolving the border crisis, systemic disinformation and – to put it mildly – ​​campaigning in public and social media is a tall order. experience for the Michałów community and border communes. It is a real test for this community, a test of humanity, a test of how seriously we take international law, especially the right to seek asylum.

Hundreds of people from all over Poland, including representatives of non-governmental organizations, came to Michałów. As part of the “Mothers to the borders!” protest, an initiative created in Wrocław and coordinated by the Wrocław Women’s Congress, three former first ladies of the Republic of Poland visited Michałowo. On November 8, the Humanitarian Relief Center was established in Michałów by the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity movement in collaboration with the Ombudsman, the Polish Red Cross and the Michałów local government. The NGO activities are coordinated by the Granica Group and the Ocalenie Foundation. Michałów is a bright spot in this bleak time.

One of the most important symbols of solidarity is the initiation of the important movement in Michałów, which is repeated in many private homes throughout Poland. The mayor lights a green lantern over his door – a sign to migrants that they will find help, food and warm clothing here. The other villagers followed in his footsteps. During Christmas Eve, a family from Syria visited the mayor, and a family from Afghanistan visited the president of the City Council.

For their steadfast attitude and solidarity, the local government and the people of Michałów received various awards, including the Commissioner’s Award for the Michałów community, Citizen of the Republic of Poland Award “Standing in the Name of Principle” for residents of Michałów, Award from the Australian Polcul Foundation for “providing assistance to refugees in borders and made Michałów a “Little Humanitarian Republic.” The Commune was visited not only by journalists from Poland and abroad, not only by politicians, but also by representatives of the Council of Europe, eg Human Rights Commissioner Dunja Mijatović.

Paweł Adamowicz is one of the most important Polish local government officials who openly refers to European human values ​​and at the same time Christian. During a conference on refugees at the Vatican in 2015, he said, referring to Gdańsk’s multicultural traditions: I think the current humanitarian crisis is a real test for our humanity (…). Mayors and presidents of cities in Europe and around the world must face fear, ignorance, stereotypes and anti-immigrant populism.

We put forward the nominations of small towns, small communes, and actually the collective winners: the residents and the Mayor who represents them. Michałów’s example shows how a human community can operate in any given time. Nobel Prize winner Wisława Szymborska, whose 100th birthday is being celebrated this year, wrote in one of her poems, “We know about ourselves as much as we have checked”.

In February 2022, thousands of Poles rushed to the border to help hundreds of thousands of families, including women and children, who had fled a Russian invasion of independent Ukraine. Poland opened their home to help the victims of the biggest crisis in our part of Europe since World War II. But the first real test of human solidarity and honesty in Poland was passed earlier, in Podlasie. This is a work in which the Michałów community actively participates, represented by its authorities and many non-governmental organizations.

This attitude is noteworthy and commendable. We, the city of refuge ICORN, want to pay tribute to the attitude of the people of the small commune and its neighbors. In this sense, the commune of Michałowo is no longer just a border, but as a border it becomes a real “connection” of Europe, remembering the authors of “Rodzinna Europa” and “Xenopolis” with this term.

Expressing my joy at the election of the Paweł Adamowicz Award Committee, on behalf of the Mayor of Kraków and Wrocław, I would like to congratulate Mayor Marek Nazarko and Deputy Mayor Konrad Sikora, representing the Michałów community, as well as all residents of this commune. And thank you – for civic courage, for European solidarity, for justice and steadfastness. To overcome “fear, ignorance, stereotypes and anti-immigrant populism”.