WARSAW, Poland – Tens of thousands of people marched through central Warsaw on Friday to the home of the leader of Poland’s ruling party in what women’s rights activists have predicted as the largest demonstration in nine days of protests against the almost total ban on abortions in Poland. .
There have been cases of far-right activists and football hooligans coming off the side streets and throwing flares at others who took part in the March on Warsaw. Warsaw police said he had arrested a dozen more people.
However, much of the march unfolded peacefully and even in a festive spirit, with others dancing while the vans played music.
The protests were triggered by a ruling by the Polish Constitutional Court on 22 October declaring abortion unconstitutional in cases of serious foetal malformations. The resolution further restricts what is already one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.
Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski of the opposition Civic Platform party joined the protesters to call for a debate between protesters and the government, which then estimated the crowd at 100,000.
Families with young people took part in the march from the beginning, joining most young people, including teenagers, protesters chanting slogans calling for government resignation and women’s freedom of choice. Many carried home-made cardboard posters, many serious, other playful ones.
A car driving in the caravan had symptoms in the windows that said, “I wish I could abort my government” and “Even Shrek wouldn’t need to live in a swamp like that. “
Many also chanted obscenities opposed to the Conservative government, which is a hallmark of nine-day street protests.
As in the past few days, demonstrations were also held in some Polish cities.
The march went to the home of right-wing ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, but police blocked the street some distance from the house. It’s not transparent if Kaczynski’s house.
He is the toughest politician in the country, although he has only the government role of deputy prime minister. He has long supported a general ban on abortion and is now blamed for being the court’s ruling, issued through party loyalty.
“Kaczynski set Poland on fire,” a sign said at the Warsaw demonstration.
Protesters ignored pandemic restrictions prohibiting public meetings of more than five other people and ignored calls from the government to stay in their homes due to the outbreak of coronavirus infections. instances reported on Friday.
The National Prosecutor’s Office threatened the organizers of the demonstration with criminal rates for “causing an epidemiological threat”, a rate punishable by up to 8 years in prison.
Klementyna Suchanow, one of the main organizers of the women’s strike initiative in Poland, said she and many others had refused to be deterred by the virus or by the government because they thought they were fighting for a right.
“It’s about the freedom and dignity of people,” Suchanow said. “People’s willingness to protest is a lesson for anyone who needs to impose authoritarian forms. “
Poland’s abortion law, forged through political leaders and the Catholic Church in 1993, allowed abortion only in cases of fetal malformations, a threat to the physical condition of women, and pregnancies resulting from crimes – incest or rape.
The recent ruling leaves a woman’s physical condition or pregnancy resulting from crimes as legal grounds for abortion.
Previous attempts through the country’s ruling conservative to amend the law to ban all abortions have also sparked mass street protests, which were added in 2016 and 2017.
This time, Kaczynski turned out to have calculated that he could simply replace the law with fewer violent reactions by obtaining a court under his control to resolve the pandemic. If that were the case, the plan has failed so far, although it is not known how long the protests will keep their momentum.
The protests included others who interrupted the devotees and described church slogans last Sunday. Such movements and vulgarity have angered many other people in the nation, largely Catholic, even some who disagree with the court’s decision.
Since then, Kaczynski has called his followers to churches.
Ministry of Health figures show that 1,110 legal abortions were performed in Poland in 2019, mainly due to foetal malformations.
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Monika Scislowska of Warsaw contributed to this report.
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