A mixed-race beauty pageant winner in Poland has notified prosecutors after suffering a wave of abuse and criticism – including from a prominent far-right commentator – following her victory.
Victoria Forrest, whose mother is Polish and father is British, last month won the title of Miss Rzeszów. Though born in London, Forrest moved to Poland soon after and grew up in Rzeszów, a city in southeast Poland, where she is now a university student.
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Her victory went largely unnoticed elsewhere in Poland until this week, when Tomasz Sommer, a far-right editor and former politician, commented on it in a now-deleted tweet.
“Have you seen Miss Rzeszów?” he asked his more than 60,000 followers on X. “This is what girls in this city look like. Will there be a woman with balls in a year?”
Najwyższy Czas, the newspaper that Sommer is editor-in-chief of, then published an article saying that, while Forrest “is undoubtedly beautiful and speaks Polish very well”, she “does not resemble a resident of the region”.
“The choice of the [Miss] Rzeszów jury looks like another symptom of political correctness and the imposition of multiculturalism on Poles,” they added. “Are there no more beautiful Polish girls in Rzeszów?”
OBRZYDLIWY KOEMNTARZ NACZELNEGO BRUKOWCA "NAJWYŻSZY CZAS". ATAKUJE MISS RZESZOWA Z POWODU JEJ KOLORU SKÓRY
"Widzieliście miss Rzeszowa? Tak właśnie wyglądają dziewczyny w tym mieście. Za rok będzie baba z jajami" – takimi słowami opisał zwyciężczynię konkursu Miss Rzeszowa… pic.twitter.com/pKCaQgNZJV
— Ośrodek Monitorowania Zachowań Rasistowskich (@OmzRi) June 27, 2024
That triggered a wave of comments on social media criticising the choice of Forrest as Miss Rzeszów and suggesting she had only been chosen because of her skin colour.
Forrest herself responded in a video posted on TikTok, saying that she had received “unimaginable hate on the internet” following Sommer and Najwyższy Czas‘s comments.
“I am Polish, associated with Rzeszów all my life,” she said. “I love Rzeszów, I felt safe here. I’ve encountered hate before, but never on this scale. Sometimes children said something unpleasant to me, and later there were isolated cases. But I never expected hate on this scale.”
Forrest also appealed for a lawyer who could help her take action against the abuse.
@forrest_victoria Bardzo prosze o zasięg dla tego postu, czy moge wyciągnać konsekwencje prawne? #hejt #ofiarahejtu ♬ original sound – 👸🏾•IG:forrest_victoria
Meanwhile, the organiser of Poland’s main national beauty contest, Polska Miss – in which Forrest will compete this September having won the Rzeszów title – announced that they would provide legal support to Forrest.
On Friday, the district prosecutor’s office in Rzeszów confirmed to local media outlet Rzeszów News that they had received notification of a suspected crime from a lawyer representing Forrest.
She alleges a violation of Poland’s hate crime law, which makes the public insult of a person based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity an offence punishable by up to three years in prison.
The notification has not been filed against a specific individual but in relation to “several dozen comments on the internet”, which prosecutors will now evaluate before deciding whether to bring charges against any of those responsible for them.
A group of young black Polish women have created a new educational platform that aims to promote discussion, awareness and understanding around issues of race in Poland.
We spoke with the founders about their "Black is Polish" project https://t.co/aKNrlXLynI
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) June 23, 2021
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Main image credit: Victoria Forrest/Facebook
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
