By now, some of you might have heard about the situation in Poland. The following text was posted on FB by a Polish friend of mine following the events of 07. August 2020 in Warsaw. It describes what happened, and the context of what led to the events of yesterday. Please reblog and share this post to spread awareness about the current situation.
For a very long time it has not been easy for me to write and talk about my country. Publicly, for a very long time I haven’t. Disagreeing with most of what the current government stands for, that would have become a full-time job. Feeling that one is powerless, one can easily become indifferent and either emigrate abroad or immigrate inside to the bubble of like minded friends, trying to just go on with life regardless, to wait out the storm, to hope for the world to change one day on its own. I am guilty of doing both. But yesterday, I believe that Poland came to its turning point. We went to sleep in a troubled democracy and woke up in an authoritarian country that uses the full force of the state apparatus to oppress and unjustly prosecute members and allies of the LGBT+ community.
No good person can stay indifferent facing these circumstance.
👉 It all began members of the activist collective “Stop Bzdurom” (eng. Stop the Bullshit) spray-painted and cut the tires of an anti-abortion van. This van was taped with graphic images of dead fetuses and frequently driving through the streets of Warsaw. While the activists spray painted the van, the driver intervened and it came to a light physical quarell with pushing and elbowing. This is the video of this altercation: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1324521857722944&id=137358556439286
👉 On the basis of that, the Public Prosecution (which is under total political control in Poland - the Minister of Justice IS the Attorney General) decided to press charges of violent assault and destruction of property against one of the members of the collective - Margot. Margot identifies as a non-binary person (it will be important later in the story). Under those charges Margot could face up to 7 years in prison.
👉 Some weeks ago, Margot was dragged out of her apartment by police in civil clothing. At that point, police refused to give any information about her whereabouts or charges. It took many hours to establish that she was taken to the prosecution office for interrogation and to provide her with a lawyer. The prosecution filed for two months of arrest, awaiting trial. The court initially denied prosecution’s request and released Margot. At that stage, this story could have ended as yet another, relatively harmless episode in our disfunctional democracy - unjust and infuriating of course, but at the end smoothened out by the somewhat independent parts of our judiciary.
👉 In between that and yesterday, the same collective hanged rainbow flags from monuments in Warsaw. One of those was a statue of Jesus. This was follwed by a wave of arrests under the charges of “desecrating monuments and offending religious feelings”. The arrested were charged while our prime minister and president were visiting desecrated monuments and placing commemorative flowers.
And then yesterday happened:
👉 The prosecution appealed the court’s denial to put Margot under arrest. Another court, for reasons still unclear, reversed the decision and decided to put Margot in jail for two months before any trial. There could not possibly be any reason to make such a decision legitimate. Margot is a special case because Polish arrest and correctional facilities are an extremely dangerous place for a (visibly) queer person like her.
👉 When Margot learned of the decision, she happened to be in the office of the biggest Polish LGBTQ+ NGO - Kampania Przeciw Homofobii (eng. The Campaign Against Homophobia). With the police on the way to arrest her (quite symbolic, isn’t it), a few NGO’s asked people to gather in front of the office in a demonstration of solidarity. A few hundred people and plenty of journalists showed up, including multiple members of parliament from left and center opposition parties.
👉Margot decided that if she has to go, she won’t just go quietly but as publicly as she can. She walked through the demonstration up to the police officers, offering herself to be taken away. They refused to arrest her. We thought they got scared of the public support and the cameras. It looks like we couldn’t have been more wrong.
👉 The spontaneous demonstration moved to a nearby allegedly desecrated monument. There, peacful demonstrators were met by an excessively large police force seperating them from the monuments. And then someone has given an order to make an example out of demonstrators and turn the arrest into a show of power.
👉 First, an unmarked car approached. A bunch of police officers in civil clothing dragged Margot inside. For all that has happened later the crowd remained non-violent.
👉 Then, demonstrators sat down around the car to prevent it from leaving. (see Photo) The police attacked with an unprecedented brutality. Tens of undercover police officers arrived and together with their colleagues in uniforms they begun brutally attacking, beating, suffocating and throwing the demonstrators into police cars driving away with them. All that during broad daylight, in front of TV cameras. Without any shame or hesitation. Multiple photos of police brutality bellow. All questions about the basis of the detention were met with laughter. The protestors were not even called upon to disperse. Just faced with violence for the sake of power - no law, no order. TV cameras have caught police officers giving eachother orders to arrest “three random people from the crowd”. Bystanders and people passing by were also arrested.
Yesterday in Warsaw is was enough to be in a wrong place, wrong time. We witnessed a straight up round up.
👉To paint the picture of the excess of the police brutality in more detail, I’ll quickly describe one of the detentions. During that whole time, MPs (Member of Parliament) were present at the site. Now, they hold immunity from being arrested, but I don’t believe anyone in Poland ever imagined that this immunity would have to be used in such a way. Among the photos below, there is one of a blonde woman, holding her hand on the back of a demonstrator, who’s being pushed to the ground by the police. That women is an opposition MP who left yesterday’s protests injured by the police and described in detailes what had happened. She saw police officers throwing the protester in the picture to the ground and kneeing her down. Her head was bleeding on the pavement. The MP run torwards them screaming to let go and pushing the police away. She lied down on the protester to guard her with her own body. Only then the police let the MP to put her purse under the bleading head of the protester (seen photo) and take care of the head-wound. The protester was then taken away by the police to an unknown location. That story is just one among many horrifying stories from yesterday.
👉 Later, noone knew where exactly the detained people were taken. We guess that around 50 people were arrested.
Police has been refusing any information. The demonstration has moved under the main police stations and the second wave of random arrests happen (you can see it on the video: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=295720058542451&id=107750507339408).
👉Members of parliament and attorneys have been present at the police stations all night trying to get any information and to provide legal help to the detainees. In order to prevent this contact, police has started to move the arrested people out of Warsaw- a tactic straight up from the harshest repressions of the communist times. On one of the photos below you can see two MPs standing in the way of a police van in the middle of the night to prevent that from happening. People were being dragged out of the police stations to the transport vans. They were shielded on the way to the car by other police vehicles to make identification impossible. Few of them managed to scream out their last name. Attorneys were immediately requesting access to their clients, and were met by police officers bluntly lying that such a person was never there.
👉 To paint the picture in more detail, again, of what was happening on the police stations- below you have a photo of a lady reading a piece of paper standing in a window with bars. That’s yet another Polish MP, reading a list of the people being held at that particular station to the desperate families searching for their loved ones.
As for today, we are still unsure about what is going to happen.
We know that the arrested people are being presented with bullshit charges, citing ”the participation in an illegal gathering with an aim of violently assaulting a person or a property". Those charges don’t stand on any grounds - not only we have photos and videos - the whole peaceful protest was on live TV.
We know that the Polish Ombudsman and the National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture has started visiting the police stations.
We know that the first international institutions have started to speak out. Example is in the photos below. With the gravity of what is happening, I’d urge for more and sooner.
Poland is not living up to any standards of a free country. Poland is below anything, that should ever be accepted within the European Union. The long-standing aspiration of my country to become a part of the “West” has shifted towards countries like Russia in a matter of a night.
I will fight this, my friends will fight this. We will not let this go gently into silent night.
But I am not sure how much more fight we have in us.
I’ll end with asking all of you abroad for support. Let people in your countries hear about this. We in Poland may not be enough.
