Polish officials against evolution

“Nature” from Oct 26, 2006:

Fifty leading scientists in Poland have signed an open letter in protest against an aggressive anti-evolution campaign launched by the League of Polish Families (LPR), the ultra-rightwing coalition partner in the conservative Polish government.
“The theory of evolution is a lie,” Mirosław Orzechowski, Poland’s deputy education minister, told the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza on 14 October. “It is an error we have legalized as a common truth.”
The LPR entered the ruling coalition in May 2006. Its leader, Roman Giertych, is also known to favour creationist views. These, as well as his openly homophobic, anti-Semitic and nationalistic opinions, have sparked student demonstrations in Warsaw since he took the minister of education job in May.
Giertych’s father, Maciej Giertych, is an LPR member in the European Parliament and is lobbying for obligatory inclusion of creationism in Polish biology curricula. Maciej … claims darwinian evolution is refuted by scientific evidence.
Orzechowski’s comments have rattled Poland’s science community. Researchers are concerned that the LPR campaign could infiltrate biology teaching in schools.
Maciej Żylicz, a senior researcher at the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Warsaw, says he was “shocked” by the remarks. “We really did not expect a creationist movement to emerge in Poland.” “It is a catastrophe,” adds Bartosz Borczyk, who is completing a PhD in zoology at the University of Wroclaw and wrote to Nature about the issue. …
Members of the Polish Academy of Sciences protested against the LPR campaign in an open letter that was published in several Polish newspapers on 17 and 18 October. Żylicz, who signed the letter, says he hopes the quick response will avert damage to Polish science and education. More…

I’m not so optimistic. LPR is going to rule the country at least for the next 3 years. That’s enough time to remove Darwinism from schools, even if now they only talk about it…