Justice minister orders release from prison of Polish nationalist who stole rainbow bag at LGBT march

Poland’s justice minister has intervened in support of a woman from a nationalist group who was given a three-year sentence for attempting to steal a rainbow-coloured bag during a protest against an LGBT march. He has ordered her to be released from prison while a presidential pardon is considered.

“The court threw a young girl in prison for three years because she protested against the promotion of leftist ideology and homosexuality,” tweeted Zbigniew Ziobro, a hardline conservative figure who is public prosecutor general as well as justice minister.

“Courts ruthlessly punish Poles for defending faith and values…[but] let people go free for attacking churches, beating the faithful and spitting at police officers,” added Ziobro, who has led the government’s contested overhaul of the judiciary. He promised “consequences” for prosecutors involved in the case.

The event in question took place in August 2020, when the young woman – named only as Marika and who was aged 21 at the time – attempted to snatch a rainbow bag from a woman taking part in the annual LGBT equality march in the city of Poznań.

According to Ordo Iuris – a prominent ultraconservative legal group that has become involved in the case – Marika did so as “a gesture of opposition to the promotion of extreme left-wing ideologies”. But she was subsequently charged with robbery and attempted theft, found guilty, and given a three-year sentence.

Ordo Iuris argues that the punishment is grossly disproportionate to the crime. They note that a group of LGBT activists who were recently found guilty of violently attacking a van broadcasting homophobic messages were given only community service.

“It is impossible not to get the impression that, when imposing such a penalty [on Marika], the court was guided by ideological considerations and a personal attitude towards the defendant’s worldview,” wrote Ordo Iuris, which noted that the court took account of her involvement with All-Polish Youth (Młodzież Wszechpolska), a nationalist group.

Ordo Iuris called for President Andrzej Duda to issue a pardon to Marika and, in the meantime, for Ziobro to grant a temporary release from prison while the pardon request is considered. It has also launched a petition in support of her release and pardon.

Yesterday, Ziobro announced that he had approved the release of Marika, who has already been in prison for a year. “Her conviction was unfounded. It’s a scandal,” wrote Ziobro, who has regularly criticised Poland’s “caste” of judges, as he calls them, for what he claims is their political activism.

One of his deputy justice ministers, Michał Woś, yesterday described the sentence given to Marika as “rainbow terrorism carried out by the caste”.

Meanwhile, a deputy foreign minister, Arkadiusz Mularczyk, announced that he will submit an application to the National Council of the Judiciary – the state body responsible for nominating and overseeing judges – to review the case against Marika.

“According to publicly available information, the case may bear the hallmarks of abuse of judicial power for political reasons,” wrote Mularczyk.

As well as leading a campaign against judges, the government has also expressed strong opposition to what it calls “LGBT ideology” and presents as a foreign threat being imported from the West in order to undermine Polish culture, families and even the state itself.

Main image credit: Max Bashyrov/Flickr (under CC BY-NC 2.0)

Alicja Ptak

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