An activist has decorated an image of the virgin Mary with a rainbow-halo – now is determined against you. Their Protest against the intolerance of the Church reflects a larger conflict in Poland.
It is one of the national icons of Poland, millions of people make the pilgrimage each year to the “Black Madonna”, the famous image of the mother of God with the child Jesus, in the monastery of częstochowa (Polish: Czestochowa).
At the end of April posters of the “Black Madonna” with a halo in the colors of the rainbow in Plock, a town North of Warsaw. They are hung to mobile toilet cabins and garbage bins in the vicinity of a Church, which had drawn just before Easter, criticism, because, in addition to a grave in the small boxes sins were listed: in addition to “treason”, “greed”, “contempt” also “Gender” and “LGBT”. Also the saying “Protect us from the fire of unbelief”.
With the posters with the “rainbow Madonna” wanted to protest the human rights activist and a trained professional psychotherapist Elzbieta Podleśna against the intolerance of the Church: The rainbow is a symbol for the Gay, lesbian and transgender movement (LGBT).
Charges of desecration
She was detained for several hours by the police for questioning. During the search of their apartment, their Computer and phones were seized. The Polish Minister of the interior Joachim Brudzinski expressed his gratitude on Twitter to the police for this action, and spoke of a “desecration of the poles for centuries as a sacred current of the Madonna image”.
The activist Elzbieta Podleśna rejects the allegations. “This is not an attack at all. How can someone be in the image attacked?”, she asked in a newspaper interview. At the time of arrest and during interrogation, she felt “like a Criminal”. You’ve taken scent samples and fingerprints. As she had been asked at the police station, her pantyhose off, she refused.
Amnesty International and the Warsaw-based Helsinki Foundation for human rights condemned the police crackdown: Podlesnas action was a “peaceful Protest”. Amnesty international calls on the Polish government, no longer people to restrict who stand up for their opinion.
Protests by the Opposition
In Warsaw, hundreds of people protested against the arrest of the activist. On official buildings such as the headquarters of the national-conservative government party law and justice (PiS), the Ministry of justice and the Prosecutor’s office came shortly after the controversial police action are also images of the rainbow Madonna. In addition, flyers were distributed to PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski in front of a rainbow Background.
“It’s about more than the support of an activist: The Catholic Church in Poland is all-powerful, it is a state within a state and is not subject to any rules,” said a young man at a protest in an interview with Polish TV channels. “The arrest of Elzbieta Podleśna is the consequence.”
Many of the protesters support the activist
A dedicated activist
Many of the protesters Elzbieta Podleśna know well. The 51-Year-old was at the women’s protests of the past few years very active, also, you are close to one of the most important groups of extra-parliamentary Opposition – “citizens of the Republic of Poland” (Obywatele RP). For headlines, you provided earlier. Because they discovered Similarities in the authoritarian style of the ruling party PiS and the former Communist party, they painted their acronym with Spray on the window of a PiS-members.
The debate around the rainbow Madonna splits, the Polish Catholics. In an open letter to the bishops ‘ conference of liberal Catholic intellectuals to criticize the police action against the activist, as it is not the task of the organs of state to judge a blasphemy. This is an instrumentalisation of the religious symbols that would accept the bishops tacitly.
In the letter Kaczynski’s statement is quoted at a campaign event, as he continued attacks against the Church, attacks against the whole of Poland. It was a “usurpation of the Church and of the country through a political party”.
Church as campaign issue
The dispute over the rainbow Madonna is part of a much larger debate between the liberal and the Conservative, the heated for years, the minds – in the election campaign before the European elections and the parliamentary elections in Poland. Jaroslaw Kaczynski defended Catholic values as part of the Polish identity. The Polish “morality” of the Catholic same. “If you look at the Polish history knows that there is no history of the Polish Nation without the Church,” he said on one of the Patriotic “family picnics” in Poland.
For the PiS-trailer, according to surveys, the largest group of voters, embody activists like Elzbieta Podleśna, the liberal enemy. Because of their action with the rainbow Madonna is now determined against you. According to Polish criminal law it because of “public insult of religious feelings or desecration of a cult item could be” sentenced to a fine or even up to two years in prison.