Protestor at saturday's march in Warsaw: photo - PAP/Grzegorz Jakubowski.
The protestors aim to repeat the demonstration in Warsaw last weekend, when tens of thousands marched against what they see as media censorship, after TV Trwam, owned by Father Rydzyk’s Radio Maryja Lux Veritatis Foundation, was denied a place on the digital television multiplex system which will replace analogue in Poland.
The National Television and Radio Council (KKRiT) said that Lux Veritatis Foundation has not supplied the necessary financial guarantees to be granted space on the platform.
TV Trwam is not funded from a license fee or advertising as other television station are in Poland, but from private contributions from viewers and supporters.
The Gazeta Polska right wing daily, which supports Father Rydzyk’s controversial media network, called the decision by the Council “digital totalitarianism”, claiming that the KKRiT is full of supporters of the ruling centre-right Civic Platform party and that the decision to deny TV Trwam a place on the digital platform was a political, not financial, decision.
Andrzej Jaworski, an MP for the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party said that the refusal to allow the television station onto the digital platform is “discrimination against Catholics” and his party will be leading the march on 8 June, before the opening match of Euro 2012 between Poland and Greece at Warsaw’s National Stadium.
Law and Justice MPs have written to President Bronislaw Komorowski, an ally of the Civic Platform government.
"We are ready to abandon the protests, but this can be done only after a change in behavior on the part of your representatives on the National Broadcasting Council,” they write.
KKRiT chief Jan Dworak said last week that the decision not to allocate space to TV Trwam was not part of any struggle against religion in Poland.
“This is a too far-reaching simplification, which not only prevents a debate about real issues, but is unfair and untrue," he said.
The Radio Maryja media group has fallen foul many times with the Roman Catholic establishment in Poland, which has criticised the political nature of the network and anti-Semitic statements which have been made on their programmes.
"This is why it seems absolutely necessary to create a new governing board for Radio Maryja and TV Trwam, that will serve the Church in Poland under the guidance of bishops united with Holy Father Benedict XVI, the spiritual heir of Pope John Paul II," Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, a long time aid to the late Polish Pope, has said.
The government plans that Poland’s switchover to digital TV from analogue will be done in three steps, with the old technology being terminated on 31 July 2013. (pg)