Tag: Hani

Opublikowane w

A Hero’s Welcome For An Apartheid Killer

On the anniversary of Chris Hani’s tragic death, the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association publishes a report on the glorification of the racist killer Janusz Walus. On 10 April 1993, Walus assassinated Hani, a leading South African anti-apartheid activist and a close associate of Nelson Mandela. In December 2024, Walus landed in Warsaw, Poland. The far right has created a peculiar cult around the killer.

Walus emigrated to South Africa from Poland in 1981. He became involved in the activities of a neo-Nazi organisation called Afrikaner Resistance Movement (Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, AWB). By murdering Hani, he tried to stop democratic changes aimed at dismantling the system of racial segregation. He was sentenced to death, but his sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. In 2022, he was granted parole but was required to remain in South Africa for an additional two years.

During his deportation flight back to Poland, Walus was accompanied by Grzegorz Braun, a Member of the European Parliament and candidate in the 2025 presidential election in Poland, an infamous antisemite, charged with several hate-related crimes.

On his return to Poland, Walus confirmed his attachment to the ideology of racism and his complete lack of remorse for the murder he had committed. In one of his YouTube interviews, he argued his case firmly by exclaiming ‘We had to eliminate someone’.

According to Rafal Pankowski, co-founder of the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association, Professor at Warsaw-based Collegium Civitas, and Rotary Peace Fellow at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda: ‘Walus is downright proud of his crime. He has become a symbol of the internationalization of violent racist extremism. It is terrifying that he has become a role model to so many’.

The report of the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association documents public expressions of support for Walus upon his arrival to Poland made by Members of Parliament and other figures.

The appreciation for Walus was demonstrated during the football fans’ annual pilgrimage to Czestochowa (Jasna Gora) – the most important Catholic monastery in Poland – in January as well as on banners during football games and on the street walls in several cities. Walus’s supporters announced multiple fundraiser initiatives on his behalf, and the far-right organisation The Patriots of Bydgoszcz (Bydgoscy Patrioci) celebrated his birthday with a  cake and a banner describing the killer as a ‘Lone White Wolf’.

Numerous online expressions of support for the racist murderer were reported by the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association to the administrators of Facebook, Twitter/X and YouTube. Dr Anna Tatar of the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association informs, ‘Only Facebook reacted and removed most of such content reported by us. Twitter/X did not delete anything. Coincidentally, its owner Elon Musk himself originates from South Africa’. YouTube also failed to remove the reported videos praising Walus and his crime.

The report includes an appendix with the words of Ewa Walus, the daughter of Janusz Walus, who contacted the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association, ‘I have never shared my father’s views. I think that proclaiming such harmful, racist and neo-Nazi statements is outrageous, but above all, it is dangerous. Because we see how the world is getting radicalised’.

The ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association is an independent civil society organisation founded in Warsaw in 1996. It has campaigned against racism, antisemitism, and xenophobia, for peace, intercultural dialogue and human rights across the world. It has actively participated in civil society networks, including the Global Alliance Against Digital Hate and Extremism (GAADHE), the International Network Against Cyber Hate (INACH), and the Alliance Against Genocide.

Rafal Pankowski (‘NEVER AGAIN Association’) with Lester Kiewit about the welcome of Chris Hani’s unrepentant killer Janusz Walus by the far-right in Poland:

https://nigdywiecej.org/en/multimedia/video-materials/5543-rafal-pankowski-with-lester-kiewit-about-the-welcome-of-janusz-walus-by-the-far-right-in-poland-24-01-2025

Report ‘«We had to eliminate someone». A Hero’s Welcome For An Apartheid Killer’ (full version in PDF file):

https://www.nigdywiecej.org//docstation/com_docstation/172/a_heros_welcome_for_an_apartheid_killer._report.pdf

Additional information:

www.neveragainassociation.org

www.facebook.com/Respect.Diversity

www.twitter.com/StowNIGDYWIECEJ

https://pl.linkedin.com/company/never-again-association

https://neveragainnw.bsky.social

Opublikowane w

PRAWICA WITA RASISTOWSKIEGO ZABÓJCĘ

Stowarzyszenie ‘NIGDY WIĘCEJ’ publikuje RAPORT na temat gloryfikowania rasistowskiego zabójcy Janusza Walusia. 10 kwietnia 1993 roku dokonał on zamachu na Chrisa Haniego, czarnoskórego działacza, który walczył o zniesienie apartheidu w RPA. W grudniu 2024 Waluś przyleciał do Warszawy. Skrajna prawica otoczyła zabójcę swoistym kultem.

Waluś wyemigrował do Republiki Południowej Afryki w 1981 roku. Zaangażował się w działania neonazistowskiej organizacji Afrykanerski Ruch Oporu (Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, AWB). Próbował powstrzymać przemiany demokratyczne, zmierzające do demontażu systemu segregacji rasowej. Za zabójstwo Haniego, bliskiego współpracownika Nelsona Mandeli, został skazany na karę śmierci, później zamienioną na dożywocie. W 2022 roku warunkowo zwolniono go z więzienia, przez kolejne dwa lata musiał pozostawać w RPA.

Walusiowi przez cały lot do Warszawy towarzyszył Grzegorz Braun, poseł do Parlamentu Europejskiego, kandydat na urząd prezydenta Polski. W samolocie był też Tomasz Stala, lider Konfederacji w Częstochowie, współpracownik kandydata na prezydenta Sławomira Mentzena. Na lotnisku przywitali Walusia członkowie gangu motocyklowego Bad Company. Jak informowały media, liderzy Bad Company mają liczne powiązania z Karolem Nawrockim, prezesem IPN, który także kandyduje na urząd prezydenta. Wieloletnim współpracownikiem Nawrockiego jest ks. Jarosław Wąsowicz, organizator corocznych pielgrzymek kibiców na Jasnej Górze, który również dał się poznać jako fan Walusia.

Po powrocie do Polski Waluś potwierdził swoje przywiązanie do ideologii rasizmu i brak jakiejkolwiek skruchy czy refleksji na temat zabójstwa, którego się dopuścił. W jednym z wywiadów na YouTube przekonywał o słuszności tego czynu: ‘Musieliśmy kogoś zlikwidować’. Jak podkreśla Rafał Pankowski ze Stowarzyszenia ‘NIGDY WIĘCEJ’, profesor Collegium Civitas i Rotary Peace Fellow na Makerere University w Ugandzie: – ‘Waluś jest wręcz dumny ze swojej zbrodni. Stał się międzynarodowym symbolem rasistowskiego ekstremizmu i przemocy. To przerażające, że dla niektórych może być wzorem do naśladowania’.

W raporcie Stowarzyszenia ‘NIGDY WIĘCEJ’ udokumentowano szereg publicznych wyrazów poparcia dla Walusia. Poseł Prawa i Sprawiedliwości Dariusz Matecki fetował jego przybycie z RPA: ‘Polska już dawno powinna się o Ciebie upomnieć!’, a poseł Krzysztof Bosak z Konfederacji zapewniał: ‘Janusz Waluś jest postacią, która przez dekady była otaczana szacunkiem w środowiskach prawicowych’. Inny parlamentarzysta tego ugrupowania Konrad Berkowicz nazwał Walusia ‘bohaterem’. Z kolei w internetowej rozmowie z Grzegorzem Braunem była radna miasta WarszawyMonikaJaruzelska… współczuła Walusiowi, którego postrzega ‘jako ofiarę’.

Uznanie dla Walusia było demonstrowane podczas pielgrzymki kibiców w Częstochowie, jak również na transparentach podczas meczów piłki nożnej czy na murach miast. Hasło ‘Waluś bohater’ pojawiło się na wiadukcie na warszawskim Targówku, ale mimo interwencji Stowarzyszenia ‘NIGDY WIĘCEJ’ władze stolicy nie kwapiły się do jego usunięcia, napis został zamalowany przez osobę prywatną. Poplecznicy Walusia ogłosili zbiórki pieniężne na jego rzecz, a Bydgoscy Patrioci świętowali jego urodziny z tortem i banerem ‘Samotny biały wilk’.

Opisane w raporcie wyrazy poparcia dla rasistowskiego zabójcy zostały zgłoszone przez Stowarzyszenie ‘NIGDY WIĘCEJ’ administratorom Facebooka, Twittera/X i YouTube’a. – ‘Tylko ta pierwsza platforma zareagowała i usunęła większość zgłoszonych przez nas treści. Natomiast niczego nie skasował Twitter/X, którego właściciel Elon Musk sam pochodzi z RPA’ – mówi dr Anna Tatar z ‘NIGDY WIĘCEJ’. Również YouTube nie usunął większości zgłoszonych materiałów video pochwalających Walusia i jego zbrodnię.

Raport zawiera też aneks ze słowami Ewy Waluś, córki Janusza, która nawiązała kontakt ze Stowarzyszeniem ‘NIGDY WIĘCEJ’: – ‘Ja sama nigdy poglądów ojca nie podzielałam. Uważam, że głoszenie tak szkodliwych, rasistowskich, neonazistowskich tez jest skandaliczne, ale jest przede wszystkim niebezpieczne. Bo widzimy, jak nam się świat radykalizuje’.

Stowarzyszenie ‘NIGDY WIĘCEJ’ jest powstałą w 1996 roku niezależną organizacją antyrasistowską, która prowadzi ‘Brunatną Księgę’ – dokumentację zdarzeń na tle ksenofobicznym i antysemickim. Jako pierwsza organizacja pozarządowa w Polsce zainicjowała kampanię przeciwko mowie nienawiści w internecie ‘R@cism-Delete’. W 2024 roku Stowarzyszenie ‘NIGDY WIĘCEJ’ zostało laureatem Nagrody im. Ronalda Eissensa i Suzette Bronkhorst za ‘wyjątkowe osiągnięcia w przeciwdziałaniu mowie nienawiści i propagowaniu praw człowieka’.

Raport ‘«Musieliśmy kogoś zlikwidować». Prawica wita rasistowskiego zabójcę’ (pełna wersja w pliku PDF).

Dodatkowe informacje:

www.nigdywiecej.org

www.facebook.com/Respect.Diversity

www.twitter.com/StowNIGDYWIECEJ

www.linkedin.com/company/never-again-association

https://neveragainnw.bsky.social

Opublikowane w

DELETING RACISM

Poland’s largest ad platform OLX and the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association have partnered together to monitor and delete sales of racist, fascist and antisemitic propaganda items. In the joint declaration, both sides commit to act in line with Polish and international law and in particular with the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination.

OLX is owned by the South African technological corporation Naspers.

In the first weeks of the partnership, OLX, acting on the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association’s recommendations, deleted 655 offers of neo-nazi gadgets, such as a lead plaque ‘celebrating Hitler’ and badges with Nazi SS symbols. Some of the deleted offers also featured extremely antisemitic books such as the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ – the most popular antisemitic pamphlet of the 20th century, and ‘The Controversy of Zion’ (Strategy of Zion in Polish) by Douglas Reed, a Holocaust denier. Other deleted items included releases of Polish and foreign music bands that support nazism and racism.

According to Rafal Pankowski, Professor of Sociology at Collegium Civitas and co-founder of the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association: – ‘It is symbolic that the first item to be deleted was a hoodie with a Celtic cross (an international symbol of white supremacy), a flag of the Confederacy (which fought to uphold slavery in the American Civil War), and a three-armed swastika used by the South African neo-nazi group Afrikaaner Resistance Movement (AWB).’

Members of this organisation fought against against the dismantling of racial segregation by committing terrorist attacks and murders. Janusz Walus, a Polish emigrant who murdered anti-apartheid activist Chris Hani in 1993, was a supporter of AWB.

Dr. Anna Tatar from the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association said: – ‘As part of the partnership, NEVER AGAIN will support the OLX Group through expert consultations and provide recommendations on ways discrimination can be tackled. This involves trainings to educate employees on how to identify racist and fascist content.’ Together with organisations outside Poland, the association will also report similar content on OLX platforms in other countries, such as Romania and Hungary.

Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa, Chief Executive Officer of Naspers South Africa voiced her support for the partnership between the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association and OLX: – ‘Both Naspers here at home and OLX in Poland abhor and condemn any form of racism and xenophobia and any attempt to disseminate hate speech of any kind.’ She also added, ‘Our team in Poland has also been engaging with NEVER AGAIN and we welcome their commitment to fight racism and discrimination. NEVER AGAIN has been working with OLX to further identify (limited incidents of) content that break the rules and are listed on the platform.’

For a number of years now, the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association has also been in partnership with the large online sales platform Allegro to eliminate sales of fascist and racist propaganda items. On 21 March 2018, the International Day Against Racial Discrimination, the association became a partner in the Partnership to Protect Rights, created by Allegro. As a result of the partnership, between March 2018 and March 2021 the platform deleted 99 percent of items identified by ‘NEVER AGAIN’, which was over 12 thousand offers in total (the final decision to delete an auction is taken by Allegro based on its terms and conditions). Among those offers were replicas of SS medals, flags of the Third Reich, as well as CDs of neo-nazi bands and books promoting antisemitism and Holocaust denial.

Among the items removed from the Allegro site upon intervention by the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association was a book entitled ‘The Way of a Nationalist’ by Tomasz Greniuch, who was, for a short time, director of the Wroclaw chapter of the state-sponsored Institute of National Remembrance (IPN). The book contains praise of fascist movements. The author refers to the antisemitic conspiracy theory, according to which a ‘world government’ was supposedly aiming to destroy Poles and Poland ‘in the time of Zionist triumph, when the idea of globalism presumes the enslavement of all the nations of the world into one superpower under the aegis of the world diaspora.’ Moreover, in his book Greniuch supports the Hitler salute: ‘We are not ashamed of our views, or of our tradition. To us the Roman salute, the greeting of the Aryan Europe, shown by raising the right arm in the direction of the sun is not a gesture meant to order beer.’ He also praises the Belgian SS officer Léon Degrelle, who was sentenced in absentia to the death penalty for his collaboration with Nazi Germany, and Corneliu Codreanu, creator of the Iron Guard, the Romanian fascist organization responsible for anti-Jewish pogroms.

Tomasz Greniuch was the leader of the fascist group National Radical Camp (ONR) in the Opole region of Poland. His many years of extremist activity have been documented by the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association in the ‘Brown Book’, a publication which monitors hate speech and hate crimes. In 2005, Greniuch co-organized a march to commemorate the 1936 anti-Jewish pogrom in the town of Myslenice. A year later, he publicly gave a ‘Heil Hitler’ salute in a student club at Opole University. He was also the founder and co-organizer of the so-called Independence Day March in Warsaw. In 2016, the program of the international far-right music festival ‘Eagle’s Nest’ included a discussion meeting with Greniuch. In 2018, he was awarded the Bronze Cross of Merit by Polish President Andrzej Duda.

Since 2018, Greniuch worked in the Opole branch of the Institute of National Remembrance, becoming head of the branch in November 2019. In January 2021, he organized an exhibition glorifying the wartime Holy Cross Brigade of the far-right National Armed Forces (NSZ), which had openly collaborated with the German Nazis. In February this year, Greniuch was appointed as Director of the Wroclaw chapter of the Institute of National Remembrance. Following protests against his appointment, both in Poland and internationally, he resigned from the position.

The ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association is an independent anti-racist organization founded in 1996. It has campaigned against antisemitism, racism and xenophobia. Since 2005, it has led the ‘Racism-Delete’ campaign, which has the objective of removing racist content from the internet. The ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association is a member of the International Network Against Cyber Hate (INACH). The Association also takes part in projects to counteract online hate speech including ‘Get the Trolls Out’ and ‘Open Code for Hate-Free Communication’.

Additional information:

www.nigdywiecej.org

www.facebook.com/Respect.Diversity

www.twitter.com/StowNIGDYWIECEJ