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Alert

Pressure on German journalists continues in wake of article making fun of Polish president

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has expressed alarm at the Polish government's campaign against the German daily "Die Tageszeitung" and its reporter Peter Kohler, who wrote an article last month poking fun at President Lech Kaczynski and Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who are identical twin brothers.

On 7 July 2006, the worldwide press freedom organisation criticised the president's attack on what he called a "vile" article and voiced concern at his government's threat to prosecute the journalist. The Warsaw regional prosecutor's office announced on 19 July that the paper and Kohler were being investigated under article 135 of the criminal code, which provides for up to three years in prison for insulting the president.

Threats have been made to "Die Tageszeitung"'s correspondent in Warsaw, Gabrielle Lesser, by anonymous callers to her mobile phone who also shouted "Heil Hitler!" The Polish foreign ministry has told her it would no longer speak to any of the paper's reporters.

Another German reporter, Doris Heimann, Warsaw correspondent of "Rheinische Post", has received provocative e-mail messages about her being Jewish.

A list of 16 German correspondents in Poland was printed on 13 July in the Polish Catholic daily "Nasz Dziennik", which invited readers to "remember these names" and regretted that the German journalists had not been punished for saying what they thought.