Silesian Separatist Movement

The Silesian Separatist Movement was registered as a political association on 19 March 2007, with Grzegorz Kot, Dariusz Jerczyński and Marcela Tampa listed as the leadership of the party. The Movement was closely associated with Związek Ludności Narodowości Śląskiej (People of the Silesian Nation) and was to be a branch of the organisation. Dariusz Jerczyński is a Silesian historian, publicist and a supporter of Silesian independence, who worked as an editor for the newspaper of the Silesian Autonomy Movement called Jaskółka Śląska. In autumn 2007, Dariusz Jerczyński made contact with the leaders of the Federation for the Development of Silesia - Grzegorz Kot and Marceli Potempa, to create a new Silesian National Movement on the basis of their former organisation. Because the local district court objected to this name, the organisation was finally registered under the name Silesian Separatist Movement, and Jerczyński became its general secretary. The founders of the Silesian Separatist Movement participated in the march for Silesian autonomy in Warsaw, where they were photographed with prominent Silesian activists such as Kazimierz Kutz and Jerzy Gorzelik. In 2007, Grzegorz Kot participated in the Polish parliamentary election, where he ran for a seat in the Senate of Poland on behalf of the People of the Silesian Nation; he obtained 385 votes. Kot also participated in the 2010 Polish local elections, running for the Katowice city council as a candidate of the Silesian Autonomy Movement; he won 51 votes. The Silesian Separatist Party wrote a response to Naturski's article, explaining that the Silesian Autonomy Movement is not a Silesian party and stating that "any Silesian who holds separatist views has every right to join the legally operating association Silesian Separatist Movement instead". == Ideology ==

The party declared "national and territorial separation of Silesia from Poland" as its main goal, along with "the sanctioning of Silesian nationality". The Silesian Separatist Movement wished to continue "the legacy and achievements of the eminent Silesian, Józef Kożdoń, as well as Silesian organisations since 1909". The party was largely inspired and based on the views of interwar parties Silesian People's Party (1908–1938) and the Union of Upper Silesians (1919–1924), as well as the writings of Kożdoń, who in 1910 wrote: "We do not know Polish patriotism, we do not know the Polish homeland. Silesia does not long for mother Poland". In regards to national Polish politics, the party leaned towards the political left - the Silesian Separatist Movement was strongly critical of the conservative Law and Justice party, and supported the idea of a coalition between Civic Platform and the Silesian Autonomy Movement. The party also claims to be strongly inspired by and following the legacy of Józef Kożdoń, who co-founded the Silesian Social Democratic Party. The movement supported the 2015 Polish referendum and stated its belief that Silesia should adopt a system of direct democracy similar to that of Switzerland. According to the Silesian Separatist Movement, the Silesian people form a nation separate from Poland. The leader of the party, Dariusz Jerzyński, published a controversial book "History of the Silesian people" which argued that Silesia is culturally separate from Poland and had undergone different socioeconomic, political and historical developments. The party also protested the 2007 proposal of Polish government to change the name of KL Auschwitz from "concentration camp" to "former German Nazi camp", arguing that the name should "reflect both their period of functioning as Nazi camps and as Soviet and Polish concentration camps, functioning in the same places between 1945 and 1948 and intended for prisoners of war and civilians: Silesians, Germans, Ukrainians and the Volksdeutsche". On 17 May 2012, the party was one of the organisers of a written a request to Prime Minister Donald Tusk to legally recognise the Silesian language as a regional language and to recognise Silesians as an ethnic minority in Poland, in the Act on National and Ethnic Minorities. National and Ethnic Minorities and the Regional Language, as per the Polish act of 6 January 2005 on national and ethnic minorities and on the regional language. One of the main demands of the party was to recognise Silesian language as a language rather than a dialect or an ethnolect of Polish. The movement emphasises not only the historical separateness of Silesia from Poland, but also the linguistic distinctiveness of Silesian. Dariusz Jerczyński wrote: "The Silesian language is a fully-fledged Slavic language [...] and not a creole language or a dialect of the Polish language. People who speak it and do not feel Polish, Czech, Moravian, Slovak, German or Austrian are of Silesian nationality and not, as Poles claim, deprived of a sense of national identity or feeling a regional identity." ==See also==