It’s the year 2020 and homosexuality is still considered a crime in so many countries all around the world.
Leaders are more focused on quelling dissent rather than working on how to control the health crisis which has already caused many deaths. This case sounds very similar to Poland and it’s President Andrzej Duda.
An ally of the ruling nationalist Law and Justice Party (PiS), Duda was re-elected on July 13, narrowly beating presidential candidate Rafal Trzaskowski and has beens sworn in for his second term in office. During his presidential campaign earlier this year, Duda proposed incorporating a ban on same-sex marriage and adoption into Poland’s constitution. He won this election based on anti-LGBT+ rhetoric.
To revolt against this ideology, LGBTQ activist Malgorzata Szutowicz, more popularly known as Margo, painted over a van with slurs against the LGBTQ community in late June and hung rainbow flags on many statues including one of Jesus in July.
On August 5, she was arrested on charges of “insulting religious feelings and disrespecting Warsaw monuments”, but was released after forty hours.
On August 7, when the police wanted to detain Margo which provided two months of pre-trial detention, hundreds of protesters gathered in Warsaw with rainbow flags to demand Margo’s release which led to a mass arrest where forty-eight people were arrested under Article 254 and Article 57 a.
According to the activists, they were protesting against the anti-LGBT+ policies of the President.
Rainbow flags were hung on statues of Jesus, the astronomer Copernicus and the Warsaw mermaid. Protesters also dressed the statues in pink face masks bearing the queer anarchism symbol. Polish police charged the protesters with desecrating monuments and offending religious feelings.
These events have been dubbed as “Polish Stonewall” by LGBTQ+ activists and the media and have led to widespread criticism of Poland’s anti-LGBT+ policies from all around the world.
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