Former Polish presidents participate in KOD anti-government protest

Thousands gathered in central Warsaw on June 4 for an anti-government march under the slogan "Freedom for Everyone, Everyone for Freedom," organised by the Committee for the Defence of Democracy (KOD), commemorating the country's landmark election of 1989, a ballot that heralded the end of communism in Poland. "We wish to celebrate, but also perhaps to express our concerns that the freedom of Poles may be somewhat threatened nowadays," the head of KOD, Mateusz Kijowski, said in the run-up to the event. The former left-wing president Aleksander Kwaśniewski along with centrist Bronisław Komorowski led about 50,000 marchers in protesting against the right-wing government’s policies and marking 27 years since the ousting of communism. Smaller marches also took place in other Polish cities and in Berlin and Brussels, the EU headquarters. “We want a free Poland because we fought for it, we dreamed about it and we built it,” Komorowski told the crowd. These rallies were the latest in a series of protests staged by KOD against changes carried out by Poland's conservative government.