Three Polish activists accused of blasphemy for attaching a rainbow halo to the statue of the Virgin of Chestochova were acquitted today by a court in Plock (center of the country) in a trial that had aroused great interest in Poland.
Elzbieta Podlesna, Anna Prus and Joanna Gzyra-Iskandar Darski, sentenced to up to two years in prison, praised the ruling as a positive “milestone” in their fight for freedom of expression.
“I still don’t understand how the rainbow, a symbol of diversity and tolerance, can offend feelings. I can’t understand it, especially if I’m a believer myself,” Podlesna told Polish media Onet.
The trial began in 2019 after police arrested 51-year-old Podlesna at her home. Dozens of printed copies of the image were confiscated, with the Black Madonna of Chestochowa, which arouses great devotion in Catholic Poland, with a halo in the colors of the rainbow.
A court then ruled that the search, like the arrest, was unnecessary and awarded Podlesna damages of approximately € 1,700.
The decision was followed by a response from Poland’s Interior Minister, Joachim Brudziski, according to which “freedom and tolerance do not give the right to offend believers’ feelings”.
Today’s ruling establishes that there is no evidence of a crime and that the activists were not moved by the desire to insult anyone’s religious feelings or insult the statue of the Virgin Mary.
According to the authors, the intention was to mix a religious image with the colors associated with the LGBT community in order to denounce the Polish Church’s hostility to sexual minorities.
Due to the publicity the case raised, the statue has become an icon of the struggle for civil rights in Poland, as well as protests against abortion bans and anti-government protests.
The LGBT community became the object of hostility in the campaign for the reelection of President Andrzej Duda. The head of state considers its members a ‘ideology, not people’, which he calls ‘more destructive than communism’.
In Poland, same-sex couples are not legally recognized and are not allowed to adopt children.
According to a report by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Poland has the highest number of libel and libel laws in force in Europe and one of the largest in the world.
Apart from insulting religious feelings, it is a crime to insult the president, the nation and the state, to government officials or monuments and part of the national heritage, including trees and mountains.