"Hate and incitement can kill," said Piotr Adamowicz, an MP with the ruling Civic Coalition (KO) and chairman of the parliamentary committee on culture and media, during a press briefing.
Adamowicz spoke alongside local officials in defence of Cieszyn Mayor Gabriela Staszkiewicz, who has become the target of online threats following an incident in which two lawmakers from the far-right Confederation party removed the flags from the town hall balcony.
Warning from brother of slain mayor
Adamowicz is the older brother of the late Gdańsk mayor, Paweł Adamowicz, who was fatally stabbed in 2019 during a charity event.
Staszkiewicz said the threats began after Confederation MPs Bronisław Foltyn and Roman Fritz removed Ukrainian flags that had been displayed on Cieszyn’s town hall since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
According to the mayor, on July 11 around 5 a.m., Foltyn used a ladder to climb onto the town hall balcony and remove the Ukrainian flags.
When town hall staff arrived for work, they discovered the flags were missing and promptly rehung them, the mayor said.
Later that day, Fritz entered the building with a group of around 20 individuals and demanded access to the balcony, according to Staszkiewicz.
Once there, he again took down the flags, saying he would deliver them to the Ukrainian embassy, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
"These were legally displayed flags, symbols of our solidarity with a neighbouring nation under attack," Staszkiewicz said.
She described the group accompanying Fritz as aggressive toward city staff.
'As a mayor, woman, mother and wife, I was brutally attacked'
The mayor, visibly emotional, read out several anonymous online messages threatening her with violence, including death threats, state news agency PAP reported.
"As a mayor, a woman, a mother and a wife, I was brutally attacked by supporters of these MPs," she said.
One message read: “Don’t act smart—they killed the mayor of Gdańsk, you can be killed too."
Staszkiewicz called on state authorities to take action and urged the public "not to remain indifferent."
"No one should be above the law," she said, condemning incidents in which "parliamentarians, hiding behind immunity, attempt to do things for which ordinary people would be held accountable."
"This is nothing more than a cheap populist stunt aimed at inciting hostility toward foreigners and sowing unrest," she added.
Adamowicz echoed her appeal, urging the interior and justice ministries to investigate and prosecute those responsible for what he called a "vile internet campaign."
Piotr Adamowicz speaks to reporters at a news conference in Warsaw on Tuesday. Photo: PAP/Rafał Guz
'Anyone acting against Ukraine is serving Putin’s goals'
Deputy Regional Policy Minister Jacek Karnowski, former mayor of Sopot on Poland's Baltic coast, also condemned the actions, accusing the Confederation of abusing parliamentary immunity and advancing Kremlin interests.
"Anyone acting against Ukraine is serving Putin’s goals," he said.
Image: MON/Polish Ministry of Defence
Other regional leaders, including the mayors of Sosnowiec and Rybnik and the deputy mayor of Bielsko-Biała, expressed solidarity with Staszkiewicz and decried the rise of xenophobia and far-right populism, the PAP news agency reported.
Sosnowiec Mayor Arkadiusz Chęciński warned that inflammatory rhetoric by opposition lawmakers was creating fear among foreign workers in Poland.
Bielsko-Biała Deputy Mayor Przemysław Kamiński criticized Foltyn—who he said is from the same city and previously ran a business employing foreigners—for using anti-Ukrainian sentiment to gain political attention.
Karnowski pledged that both local and national authorities would continue to defend democracy, the rule of law and solidarity with Ukraine.
“We know where hate speech can lead,” he told reporters. “We will always stand by those who are targeted by it—and with our Ukrainian friends, who are fighting for their freedom and ours.”