POLAND HITS GERMANY OVER VISA FOR ACTIVIST

WARSAW: The Polish government criticized Germany on Thursday (Friday in Manila) over its decision to grant a visa to a Ukraine rights activist that Warsaw had banned. “Granting a short-stay visa to Lyudmyla Kozlovska was unjustified,” a foreign ministry statement said. The position had been made clear by a deputy foreign minister to the German ambassador in Warsaw, the statement added. Polish press reports said Kozlovska took part in a parliamentary debate in Berlin on civil rights in Poland and Hungary, both of which have fallen foul of the European Commission (EC) for steps said to compromise democratic values and the rule of law. Polish President Andrzej Duda denounced the holding of such a debate in a conversation with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier while both men were in Latvia on Thursday, the PAP news agency reported. Kozlovska says she has come under pressure from the Polish authorities because of the activities of her activist husband Bartosz Kramek who has repeatedly spoken out against the country’s conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government. Kozlovska, president of the Warsaw-based human rights organization Open Dialog, said last month that she had been stopped by Belgian border guards after Poland put her on a list of people to be deported from the Schengen zone— the 26 countries which are part of the European free movement area.