Independence Day March in Warsaw, 11 November 2017. Jaap Arriens/PA Images. All rights reserved.Piotr Szczęsny was an ordinary Polish citizen who set himself on fire outside the Warsaw Palace of Culture and Science on the 19th October 2017. His action wasn’t an accident; it was a protest against the current Polish government. Just before Szczęsny set himself ablaze, he read passages of a personal manifesto that read: "I, an ordinary human being like you, call on you all – don't wait any longer!". His death went largely unreported internationally.
Yet Szczęsny’s call to action did move some people in Poland. Since his death, there have been daily recitals by a woman standing alone in the middle of a town square in Cieszyn, in Southern Poland – she continuously reads Szczęsny’s manifesto aloud. Among other things, Szczęsny protested against: “the hate speech and xenophobia, which this government has pushed into public debate”; “the hostile attitude to immigrants” and “discrimination against minorities”.
In Poland, we rarely talk about racism.
