Global Issues
POLAND: Many Causes Lose Their Leaders
The plane crash which claimed the lives of 95 Polish officials and public figures, including President Lech Kaczynski, has dealt a blow to minority rights movements in the country, activists say.
The President and other high-ranking political and military officials and public figures were killed when the plane carrying them to a memorial service for victims of a World War II massacre crashed in Smolensk, Russia, on Saturday.
Activists say that among the victims were a number of people who had backed minority rights causes and that they were 'irreplaceable' to some rights movements.
'Some of our greatest supporters and friends were lost in this crash, and they will be irreplaceable for gay rights and women's movements,' Marta Abramowicz, president of Poland's Campaign Against Homophobia, told IPS.
'MPs who had helped and supported us were killed, as well as activists who worked tirelessly for rights groups. For instance, Izabela Jaruga-Nowacka, who was killed, was one of our greatest supporters and a great figure in the Polish women's rights movement. The gay and women's rights movements have lost so many people that this will be a large setback for them.'
Jaruga-Nowacka, who was Poland's deputy prime minister between 2004 and 2005, was an internationally renowned campaigner for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, and for women's rights in Poland. She was also one of the most vocal critics of what have widely been seen among rights groups as homophobic government policies and campaigns in recent years.
She shrugged off constant attacks from Catholic groups and extremist organisations to speak at rights rallies, and was especially critical of statements by the late President, who once said that promoting homosexuality would lead to destruction of the human race, and who, as mayor of Warsaw, banned gay pride marches in the Polish capital.
Both gay and women's rights movements have struggled to move their causes forward in strongly Catholic Poland, and critics say their efforts were stifled further after Lech Kaczynski became President in October 2005 and his twin brother Jaroslaw took the post of Prime Minister in July the following year.
Their right-wing conservative and nationalist Law and Justice party espouses policies based on Christian traditional values, and has demanded even stronger restrictions on abortion. Poland already has some of Europe's strictest abortion laws, with terminations allowed only in exceptional circumstances.
The party is against same sex marriages and any legal recognition of homosexual partnerships. Its policies resonated with voters in strongly Catholic Poland.
Kaczynski won praise for his staunch defence of Polish minorities abroad. He was a persistent, and perhaps among European leaders the most vocal, opponent of Belarus's autocratic leader Aleksander Lukashenko. Only last month he condemned the detentions and trials of activists from the Union of Poles in Belarus.
He personally wrote to Lukashenko to stand up for the Polish minority in the country, whose leaders claim they face persecution and discrimination. He called on the European Union and European Parliament leaders to deal with the matter when Minsk ignored him.
Local media says the Polish minority in Belarus has lost its most powerful supporter.
Kaczynski also backed the rights of the 200,000-strong Polish minority in neighbouring Lithuania. Last week during an official visit to Lithuanian capital Vilnius, the late President had spoken of his 'shock' at a decision by the Lithuanian parliament to keep in place a ban on the use of non-Lithuanian characters in official documents. The Polish minority had campaigned for the use of Polish characters on street names and in passports to be made legal. He said the Lithuanian parliament decision would only help 'those opposed to closer ties.'
Kaczynski had been due to run for re-election later this autumn. Following his death, under the Polish constitution, elections must now be held within 60 days. Parliament Speaker Branislaw Komorowski, who had already been chosen by his Civic Platform party to run against Kaczynski in the presidential elections, has taken over as interim head of state.
He had been leading Kaczynski in opinion polls prior to the crash and is still expected to win the presidential elections.
© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service