Warning that migrants carry “very dangerous diseases long absent from Europe,” the leader of the right-wing party that looks likely to win Poland’s October 25 parliamentary elections sought this week to turn Poles’ wariness towards Muslim refugees into a political issue.
Speaking at a rally earlier this week, Jarosław Kaczyński, a former prime minister and leader of the Law and Justice party, warned that Poland could be forced to resettle more than 100,000 Muslims.
He went on to say that migrants have already brought diseases like cholera and dysentery to Europe, as well as “all sorts of parasites and protozoa, which … while not dangerous in the organisms of these people, could be dangerous here.”
His comments caused an immediate stir, with some of his political rivals saying Kaczyński’s language smacked of the terms Nazis used to describe Jews.
“This is a reference to old, dangerous and dishonest sentiments from the time of the war,” said Marek Sawicki, the agriculture minister with the Polish People’s Party, the junior member of the ruling coalition.
Ewa Kopacz, the prime minister and leader of the ruling Civic Platform party, quickly said there was no secret plan to accept 100,000 refugees.
In earlier comments made in the Polish parliament, Kaczyński warned of Muslim migrants who would seek to impose Sharia religious laws on Europe and who use churches as “toilets.”
Migrants have already brought diseases like cholera and dysentery to Europe, as well as “all sorts of parasites and protozoa” — Jarosław Kaczyński.
Although Kaczyński’s comments are offensive and disturbing to many, there is fertile ground in Poland for antipathy towards accepting migrants, especially Muslims. Poland is one of the most ethnically and religiously homogenous countries in Europe and recent opinion polls have shown that 56 percent of people are opposed to accepting refugees and only 8 percent are in favor.
Kopacz has also been unenthusiastic about accepting asylum seekers. Initially Poland, along with most other countries in central Europe, resisted a European Commission plan to resettle refugees across the EU. In the end, Kopacz buckled and sided with Germany, agreeing to accept about 4,500 of the 120,000 refugees being apportioned.
Poland’s powerful Roman Catholic Church has come out in favor of being generous to asylum seekers, with the country’s leading bishop calling on parishes to accept people fleeing Syria and for them to be treated with “brotherhood” and respect.
At a time when Law and Justice is closing in on a parliamentary majority — a new opinion poll shows it with 36 percent support while Civic Platform has 24 percent — every effort is being made to both reach out to new centrist voters as well as cementing its hold on its traditional nationalist supporters.