“We are dealing with an organized operation focused on harassing key people within the company, aimed at triggering crises, consuming our time, and inflaming emotions,” said Tomasz Sakiewicz on the air of TV Republika. He also stated that employees of the media outlets belonging to Free Speech House have been receiving calls involving further false alarms.
In recent days, attacks targeting journalists of TV Republika have intensified. Within just several hours, police reportedly carried out as many as nine interventions involving journalists from the station as well as editors from other outlets affiliated with Free Speech Zone. Many of these interventions concerned reports claiming that deceased individuals were allegedly located in the homes of independent media employees or that someone was supposedly “planning to commit suicide.”
“The authorities’ attack on TV Republika, which has been ongoing for a week, is merely an escalation of what has been happening around us for the past two and a half years. Constant ‘blackouts’ imposed by various operators, the humiliation and intimidation of our journalists, a series of false alarms that triggered interventions by the services around our newsroom and the homes of our journalists, as well as threats of my arrest, show that the authorities now have only one party to blame for their failures: us,”
wrote TV Republika president Tomasz Sakiewicz in today’s edition of Gazeta Polska Codziennie.
Tomasz Sakiewicz: “It was a very difficult night”
This morning, Tomasz Sakiewicz stated that “for many of us, it was a very difficult night.”
“When I appeared on TV Republika yesterday, it was before the police visited my home. The police tried to force their way to my door, but my neighbors did not let them in. I contacted one of the officers, the recording is in the newsroom. The police apparently received an increased number of reports claiming that someone needed help, which is why they were trying to reach me,”
he said.
He added that “at the same time, police conducted a search at the home of one of our most recognizable journalists, looking for a deceased person. So far, we have recorded nine interventions.”
The president of TV Republika also reported that “during the night, there was a very strange operation. I do not consider it a coincidence. At the same time, several people from our newsroom were approached by alleged delivery drivers who kept knocking and ringing doorbells, claiming that something had been ordered. Nobody had ordered anything.”
“We are facing an organized operation focused on harassing key individuals in the company, designed to provoke crises, occupy our time, and inflame emotions. The information, at least regarding the alleged suicide attempts or attacks, as we have established, partly originated from the Central Investigation Bureau, meaning the operation is orchestrated. What is interesting is that, despite what appears to be a single main source of these reports, which are then heard at other police stations, there is no single body conducting an investigation into the matter. In other words, it is being deliberately fragmented so that nothing can be determined. The police officer I spoke with around 6 p.m. refused to acknowledge that this was part of an organized operation. After 6 p.m., further incidents occurred,”
he assessed.
As he emphasized, “this is ongoing and escalating. It is a massive strike against TV Republika, an attempt to destroy us. We are also aware of recruitment attempts and surveillance efforts. There is also this summons to the prosecutor’s office. Yesterday, the minister of justice announced that I would appear there as a suspect. Mr. Korneluk and the prosecution spokespersons said the same. Yet the summons itself refers to an ‘unrelated crime’ concerning not me, but Zbigniew Ziobro. This is clearly an attempt at deception, misleading conduct, and document falsification by an illegal prosecutor who issued this summons to me.”