PAGING WINSTON SMITHNOWICKI: “Polish Parliament Votes to Criminalize Any Mention of Polish Crimes During the Holocaust.” Not that I believe any enforcement of this law would succeed in the ECHR under Article 10, but speech bullies rarely care about a law’s infirmity as long as they can bring the pain for speaking up.

According to the law, which was approved on Friday by the country’s lower parliament, anyone who publicly attributes guilt or complicity to the Polish state for crimes committed by Nazi Germany, war crimes or other crimes against humanity, will be liable to criminal proceedings. Punishment will also be imposed on those who are seen to “deliberately reduce the responsibility of the ‘true culprits’ of these crimes.”

The European Court of Human Rights has spanked Poland’s judiciary before for enforcing judgments against political speech. Columbia University’s Global Freedom of Expression Center (where I serve pro bono as one of their experts) details Ziembinski v. Poland where a writer was punished for calling a local politician “a “numbskull”, “poser” and “dim-witted official.” That sounds like most local officials I know.

As to the new law, it’s doomed on extraterritorial reach as well: “The new law will apply both to Polish citizens and to foreigners regardless which country the statement is supposed to have been made in.”

Good luck enforcing a judgment enforcing that law in a US Court:

The SPEECH Act provides that a domestic court “shall not recognize or enforce a foreign judgment for defamation” unless it satisfies both First Amendment and due process considerations.

The law also forbids use of the term “Polish death camp” to describe the death camps where Jews and others were murdered in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War.