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WARSAW, Poland, January 25, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — As a brain-damaged Polish Catholic lies dying of starvation and dehydration in an English hospital, one of his sisters has made another plea to the Polish government.
“When will the Polish state take away its diplomat?” she asked Polish authorities over Twitter just over two hours ago.
She added that the family will, if it has to, return to the European Court of Human Rights.
“If you don’t want to do that, we ask you [to invoke] Article 33 in Strasbourg. You cannot wait any longer!” she stated.
The names of, and other identifying information about, the Polish patient, his wife, children, birth family, doctors and hospital are under a publication ban.
Article 33 in the European Convention on Human Rights stipulates that one state can sue another in the European Court of Human Rights to make sure the second is not violating the rights of a citizen of the first.
It reads: “Inter-State Cases: Any High Contracting Party may refer to the Court any alleged breach of the provisions of the Convention and the Protocols thereto by another High Contracting Party.”
Although the United Kingdom has left the European Union, the country is still a High Contracting Party in the Council of Europe, as is Poland, and both are signatories of the ECHR. Article 2 of the ECHR protects the right to life, and Article 3 prohibits torture and “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
The Polish patient, known to the English-speaking world only as “P” or “RS” thanks to a court order protecting his identity, has been without nourishment and without more hydration than is needed to administer the analgesics and sedatives used in his “palliative care.”
PETITION UPDATE (1/26/21) -
With regret, we report that Mr. R.S. has passed away (+RIP). May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
Thank you for keeping him and his loved ones in your prayers.
Please read this LifeSite article on R.S.'s passing: 'BREAKING: Pro-life Polish Catholic dies from dehydration, starvation in English hospital' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-pro-life-polish-catholic-dies-from-dehydration-starvation-in-english-hospital
We hereby suspend this petition.
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PETITION UPDATE (1/22/21) -
The Polish government has issued a diplomatic passport to a Polish patient dying from the withdrawal of nutrition and hydration in an English hospital.
According to multiple Polish media sources, including the mainstream national newspaper Rzeczpospolita, the Polish government has issued the passport in an attempt to remove the Polish patient from the power of the British courts. Conservative news website wPolityce has reported that the passport is already on its way to London.
The case has become a major scandal in Poland, public anger snowballing since the news spread to the Eastern European country in late December. Jacek Kotula, a Polish regional councillor and leading pro-life activist, told LifeSiteNews that “all Poland” is talking about it.
“Thank you for the support,” he said, referring to LifeSiteNews’ ongoing coverage of the case, “because it is a battle with the Civilization of Death.”
“For us Poles, euthanasia is Hitlerism [Nazism] … How can a normal person say that is in the best interests of a dying Pole that he should die? In Poland we fight until the end for life, which is the greatest gift of the Creator!”
Please continue to SIGN and SHARE this urgent petition. And, please continue to pray for a miracle. Thank you!
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PETITION UPDATE (1/19/21) -
Another legal intervention on behalf of R.S. to save his life by having nutrition and hydration restored to him has been refused by the presiding judge in the U.K.
Judge Cohen refused to allow the Polish Consul General to visit R.S., a Polish national who suffered a brain injury while residing in Britain.
This is the latest set-back for R.S.'s birth family, who have been trying every legal avenue to have R.S.'s nourishment reinstated, so that he could be transported from the U.K. to his native Poland, where he could be cared for.
Please pray that this situation would somehow be resolved, and life-enabling treatment restored.
'BREAKING: UK court forbids Polish Consul General from visiting Pole dying in English hospital' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-uk-court-forbids-polish-consul-general-from-visiting-pole-dying-in-english-hospital
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A Polish Catholic man who suffered a brain injury, R.S. (his identity has been protected), is being deliberately starved and dehydrated to death in a British hospital, even though he has shown signs of improvement.
Please SIGN and SHARE this urgent petition to help save this man's life by demanding that the British government and the treating hospital re-authorize nutrition and hydration with immediate effect.
This shocking situation has been going on since December, as R.S.'s wife and doctors have argued that R.S.'s vital life-support should be cut-off while his birth family has argued that his life-support should be maintained so that he can be transported back to Poland where he would be cared for.
R.S.'s mother stated: "I am devastated that the British authorities have decided to dehydrate my son to death. I want to take my son back to his own country, where I would be allowed to care for him," she said. "What the British authorities are trying to do to my son is euthanasia by a back door."
And, at Christmas, video of R.S. was taken showing his condition to have improved since he sustained his brain injury.
In the same video, R.S. is seen in what some have described as a 'minimally-conscious state,' but that evidence, and the accompanying testimony of two neurologists, was rejected out-of-hand by a British judge.
The birth family of R.S. then took the case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which also summarily rejected the case for a technicality based on standing. The presiding judge, Judge Grozev, said that R.S.'s niece was not a close enough relation to him for the case to be heard.
How appalling a reason to deprive a man of food and water!
But, right now, R.S.'s lawyers from the Christian Legal Centre (CLC) are now pursuing a last-ditch effort to have the ECHR judge recused from the case because, as Dr. Roger Kiska of the CLC told LifeSite, "Mr. Grozev was a long-time member of the George Soros funded Open Society Foundation which advocates for the type of euthanasia being utilised in the R.S. case," before he became an ECHR judge.
All the while, the Polish Government has been doing everything in its power, including offering to airlift R.S. back to Poland, to help the situation.
So, in other words, there are people ready and willing to help take care of R.S. if and when released by the hospital for transit out of Britain.
Please SIGN this urgent petition to the British Government demanding that they stop the process of euthanizing R.S., and allow him to return to his home country where he may be able to recover from his current state.
After signing, please take a few minutes to politely contact the following:
British Embassy in Washington, D.C.
+1 (202) 588-6500
3100 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington DC 20008
USA
British High Commission
+1 (613) 237-1530
80 Elgin Street Ottawa Ontario K1P 5K7
Canada
Dominic Raab, Foreign Secretary
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA
020 7219 7069
[email protected]
LATEST INFORMATION:
BREAKING: UK court forbids Polish Consul General from visiting Pole dying in English hospital - https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-uk-court-forbids-polish-consul-general-from-visiting-pole-dying-in-english-hospital
'Hope dims for pro-life Polish Catholic now dying of hunger, thirst in English hospital' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/hope-dims-for-pro-life-polish-catholic-now-dying-of-hunger-thirst-in-english-hospital
'UK Courts Accused of 'Euthanasia by a Back Door' After Ordering Withdrawal of Vital Treatment for Foreign Citizen' - https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2021/january/uk-courts-accused-of-euthanasia-by-a-back-door-after-ordering-withdrawal-of-vital-treatment-for-foreign-citizen
**Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com
Shortly after her plea to the Polish Government, RS’s sister reported on Twitter that his health is deteriorating.
“Unfortunately, my brother’s condition is getting worse,” she wrote.
“Here’s the information we got from the hospital: RS was assessed today by a palliative care team. His condition has worsened since yesterday’s examination. He has increasingly frequent breaks in breathing. He seems to be comfortable and shows no increase in myoclonic seizures. He is still receiving subcutaneous infusions of fluid (saline) and midazolam as before. We have begun to administer drugs to help control mild discharge from his air passages.”
Yesterday LifeSiteNews learned that the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MSZ) had stalled in its efforts to repatriate RS, to whom it said it had given diplomatic status so as to remove him from the jurisdiction of the British courts. RS’s birth family, who have been fighting, with some temporary success, to have nutrition and hydration returned to him, have mixed reviews of the different ministries of the Polish Government who have taken an interest in the case. Although publicly grateful to Poland’s Ministry of Justice, the family does not understand why the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not given them evidence of RS’s diplomatic status.
“The Ministry of Justice has acted and wants to act in this matter, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is being obstructive,” one of RS’s two sisters told Poland’s Polonia Christiana magazine.
“We don’t understand why the MSZ is waiting in this matter,” she continued.
“Our English lawyers say that [the British Government’s] accreditation is not necessary. It is enough to tell them that my brother is a diplomat.”
On November 6, RS suffered a heart attack at his home in the south-west of England and fell into a coma. On December 15, 2020, Mr Justice Cohen of the Court of Protection decided that it was in RS’s “best interests” to cease receiving life-sustaining care. RS’s hospital doctors believe that he is now in a vegetative state. Justice Cohen left the final decision to the hospital treating RS and to RS’s wife “to decide between themselves whether hydration is to be withdrawn.”
By December 23, RS was able to breathe without clinical assistance.
RS’s wife has supported the University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust in its application to remove RS’s hydration and nutrition and opposed her in-laws' attempts to challenge Justice Cohen’s decision. Members of RS’s birth family who surreptitiously filmed RS during a Christmas Day farewell visit believe that he is in a minimally conscious state and that he reacted to their presence.
The video footage, whose creation and publication has been deplored by Justice Cohen, has been published widely in Poland, where many people believe that RS recognized his relations and that the hospital authorities in the U.K. want to harvest his organs. The case has become a cause celebre and a matter of bitter dispute among politicians in RS’s native country.
LifeSiteNews has contacted the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to establish whether or not Poland has informed them of RS’s diplomatic status, but the FCDO would not comment on the matter. LifeSiteNews then wrote to Deputy Minister Paweł Jablonski of the MSZ, but has not yet received an answer.
For more coverage of the RS case, please click here.
Britain’s Christian Legal Centre, which has been supporting RS’s birth family in their fight for his life, has incurred over £70,000 in expenses while fighting the case. To donate to the cause, please click here.