Polish prosecutors appeal acquittal of drag queen accused of inciting bishop’s murder

Prosecutors have appealed against the acquittal of a drag queen whom they accuse of inciting murder with a performance that involved scissors, fake blood and an inflatable doll featuring the image of a Polish bishop who has made anti-LGBT statements.

The decision comes after the public prosecutor general, who also serves as justice minister in the conservative government, criticised the court’s ruling as “embarrassing” and called the drag queen “depraved”.

The incident in question, which drew widespread coverage and commentatory at the time, took place at a nightclub in the city of Poznań in 2019, where the drag queen – who can be named only as Marek M. under Polish privacy law – performed under the stage name of Mariolkaa Rebell.

Images shared on social media showed the performer holding a doll with an image of Marek Jędraszewski, the archbishop of Kraków, as well as scissors and fake blood.

A few days earlier, Jędraszewski had liked the “rainbow plague” of LGBT to the “red plague” of Bolshevism. He has subsequently repeatedly attacked what he and other conservatives, including the ruling party, call “LGBT ideology”, which the archbishop has likened to Nazism as well as communism.

According to prosecutors, during the performance, Marek M. danced to a pop song that included the line (in Polish) “I killed him with all my might” and simulated the murder of the clergyman, reports the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

They accuse Marek M. – who the newspaper notes identifies as a gay man – of public incitement to commit murder, of religious hatred, and of insulting Catholics because of their faith.

However, in a trial in June, Poznań district court found the accused not guilty. Judge Agata Trzcinska said that prosecutors lacked evidence: they provided no recordings or direct witnesses, instead relying on media reports without establishing if the journalists were present during the performance.

Marek M. himself had argued that he did not simulate slitting the doll’s through, saying he had merely danced with it and then pierced the bag of fake blood with scissors to show that the archbishop had wounded his, Marek M.’s, heart with his anti-LGBT remarks.

The judge found that the performance was not hateful and was within the bounds of artistic freedom and freedom of expression. She also noted that it was a response to Jędraszewski’s earlier statements. “If you have controversial views, you have to take into account the reaction,” said Trzcinska, quoted by Gazeta Wyborcza.

However, the prosecutor’s office in Warsaw, which took over the case from its counterpart in Poznań early in the process, is now calling for that verdict to be overturned and for the trial to be repeated.

Prosecutors believe that the court “made erroneous factual findings” which were “lacking objectivity and contrary to the principles of logic”, said Aleksandra Skrzyniarz, spokeswoman for Warsaw prosecutor’s office, quoted by state broadcaster TVP.

She added that analysis of photos, including “the facial expressions of the accused”, show that he “emanated negative emotions, such as anger or hatred” and that this was “not a peaceful, non-aggressive act of artistic performance but a planned simulation of the murder of a specific representative of the Roman Catholic Church”.

That decision followed condemnation of the acquittal by Zbigniew Ziobro, the public prosecutor general and justice minister, who said that it “goes beyond all [acceptable] standards and does harm to the image of the Polish judiciary”.

Referring to Trzcinska, Ziobro said that “it is embarrassing that we have such judges in Poland”, reports Wirtualna Polska. He described Marek M. as a “depraved type who committed disgusting behaviour”, and warned that leaving such actions unpunished could in future “result in actual murder”.

Separately, nearly two dozen people filed notices that the archbishop’s anti-LGBT remarks constituted hate speech. But in 2020, both prosecutors and courts refused to open proceedings, finding that Jędraszewski’s words were not meant to refer to specific individuals, reports the Rzeczpospolita daily.

Poland’s hate crime laws do not cover sexual orientation or gender identity, meaning that LGBT people are not protected from such speech as a group in the same way that racial, ethnic or religious minorities are.

For the last three years, Poland has been ranked as the worst country in Europe for LGBT people, amid a vocal anti-LGBT campaign led by the ruling coalition and parts of the Catholic church.

Main photo credit: Facebook/FB/PrideNews.pl.

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.