1. CONTEXT: SYSTEMIC SUPPRESSION OF LGBTI RIGHTS
LGBTI people in Poland have struggled for decades against systemic discrimination, which has often been implemented under the guise of protecting so-called “traditional values”. Although same-sex relationships were decriminalised in 1932, the communist authorities of the post-war period in Poland consistently treated homosexuality as a social pathology. The authorities have systematically monitored LGBTI people and deliberately presented them as a group with clear criminal inclinations and as a potential threat to public order. For example, between 1985 and 1987, on the orders of the Minister of the Interior, a secret mass operation by the Citizen’s Militia, known as Operation Hyacinth, resulted in the detention of 11,000 people “suspected of or in contact with homosexuality.”6 They were interrogated in an effort to extract confessions about their private lives. As a result, compromising details gathered during this operation were stored by the Secret Service as so-called “pink files”. The authorities called the operation a preventive move to infiltrate and counteract sex work and “homosexual criminal gangs.” The fall of communism in 1989 opened a new chapter for human rights protection in Poland. However, efforts to ensure the human rights of LGBTI people under international and European Union (EU) law were hampered by ongoing stigma and discrimination, exacerbated over the years by politicians from both main parties and the Catholic Church. There have been several attempts to legalize civil partnerships, but the relevant bill was voted down three times in the Sejm (Poland’s Parliament) between 2013 and 2015. Legal adoption by same-sex partners remains impossible in practice, and in July 2020 President Andrzej Duda signed a draft amendment to the Constitution that seeks to ban access to legal adoption for people in same-sex relationships.7 Although legal gender recognition of transgender people is possible in Poland, it is a lengthy and costly process, requiring a number of mandatory criteria to be met – such as suing the parents or providing the non-refunded complex medical diagnosis. Even if these conditions are met, a court can still deny legal Remigiusz Ryziński, Hiacynt. PRL wobec homoseksualistów, 2021 (in Polish only); Łukasz Szulc, Operation Hyacinth and Poland's pink files, NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality, 2 February 2016. 7 Poland, the draft Amendment to Constitution, 6 July 2020, www.prezydent.pl/storage/file/core_files/2021/8/5/4bad51aa665957e2cd12ec241e17eab5/s22c-6e20070613530.pdf 6
“THEY TREATED US LIKE CRIMINALS” FROM SHRINKING SPACE TO HARASSMENT OF LGBTI ACTIVISTS Amnesty International
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