'There is an atmosphere of aggression in Poland'

WARSAW: Pawel Adamowicz, the liberal mayor of the Polish city of Gdansk, died yesterday of his wounds a day after being stabbed on stage at a charity event. "We couldn't win," Poland's health minister Lukasz Szumowski told reporters via private broadcaster TVN. Adamowicz was attacked while attending the annual Great Orchestra of Christmas charity, a fundraiser where volunteers collect money for medical equipment in hospitals.

Television footage showed a man screaming "Adamowicz is dead!" as he rushed the stage and stabbed the mayor. Speaking on the stage before he was arrested, the man accused the mayor's former party of putting him in prison and said he was tortured. Doctors operated on Adamowicz for five hours after the incident, Poland's state news agency PAP said.

Politicians across the political spectrum in Poland condemned the stabbing, including members of the ruling nationalist Law and Justice Party (PiS), such as Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Interior Minister Joachim Brudzinski. Adamowicz was known as an opponent of PiS. "I'm expressing great pain for the tragic death due to the criminal attack on mayor Pawel Adamowicz. We express solidarity with his family," Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the country's ruling party leader was quoted as saying in a tweet from the party spokeswoman.

Polish President Andrzej Duda will meet with political party leaders to organize a march against violence and hatred in the wake of the attack. Adamowicz stood out for his initiatives to encourage migrants to seek refuge in the northern Polish city, and for his support of a protest campaign defending the rule of law in Poland against PiS efforts to increase its control over the judiciary and other bodies. Adamowicz was one of Poland's longest-serving mayors, holding his position in Gdansk since 1998. In the 2018 regional election, he won 65 percent of votes.

'Atmosphere of aggression'

Paramedics resuscitated Adamowicz at the scene before rushing him to the hospital. Gdansk residents flooded blood donation centers following news that Adamowicz had received 15 liters of blood and required more of the rare O Rh- type. "There is an atmosphere of aggression in Poland," a blood donor who identified himself only as Zygmunt told AFP, reflecting on the broader context of the attack. A local police spokesman said the detained man was a 27-year-old who lived in Gdansk, a Baltic coast city with a population of around half a million that was the cradle of Poland's anti-communist Solidarity movement in the 1980s.

In a video recording of the attack posted on YouTube, the suspect was seen seizing the microphone and claiming he had been wrongly jailed by the previous centrist government of the Civic Platform (PO) party and tortured. "That's why Adamowicz dies," he said. One witness told broadcaster TVN that the man appeared "happy with what he had done".

'Solidarity' with mayor

Adamowicz has been mayor of Gdansk for two decades and the opposition Civic Platform, the arch-rival of Poland's governing right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, had supported his re-election in 2018 municipal polls. Since winning office in 2015, the PiS has systematically blamed PO politicians for an array of issues, ranging from VAT fraud to the 2010 crash of a Polish presidential jet in Russia that claimed the life of then president Lech Kaczynski, the identical twin brother of PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

Sunday's fundraising event was part of a popular annual nationwide drive to purchase medical equipment for children and featured a colourful stage set-up including lights, smoke and pyrotechnics. "Despite our political differences, I stand without question in solidarity with him and those close to him… I pray for his swift recovery," PiS-allied President Andrzej Duda said on Twitter.

'Doubts about his sanity'

The suspect had previously been sentenced to more than five years in prison for four armed attacks on banks in Gdansk, justice officials confirmed. Deputy prosecutor general Krzysztof Sierak said the suspect would be charged with attempted murder and would undergo a psychological assessment due to "doubts about his sanity".

Police were investigating how the attacker had been able to breach security to reach the podium, local police spokeswoman Joanna Kowalik-Kosinska told reporters. "We know that he used an identifier with the inscription 'Press'," she said. "Now we have to establish how it was obtained, was the accreditation in his name and was he really entitled to be there at that time?" This type of attack is rare in Poland. A similar incident occurred in 2010 when an assailant gunned down an aide at a regional PiS office before stabbing another PiS employee, who survived.

EU President Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, along with European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans and mayor of London Sadiq Khan also expressed their support for Adamowicz. Anti-violence rallies were expected in Gdansk and several other major cities across Poland today. - AFP