Equality Parade, Fascism and Repression

The Equality Parade took place on Saturday June 10th in Warsaw. One person is still in arrest and the fascistic Mlodziez Wszechpolska want to charge people with "attacking the public", an outrageous charge considering that an MP from their parent party, League of Polish families incited violence against participants in the gay parade and they themselves have been throwing stones at it for the last couple of years. (Click czytaj dalej)

FASCISTS WANT TO CHARGE ANARCHISTS!!!

On Saturday, the Equality Parade took place in Warsaw. About 5000+ people
came, including some guests from other countries who came to show solidarity
with the protest.

In general, the parade was only moderately lively and there was a somewhat
tense atmosphere in the parade. Of course fascists, mostly from NOP and ONR
came to throw things at the parade. At the beginning they were met and
outnumbered by members of the pink and black block who confronted them with
anti-fascist chanting etc.. The appearance of the bloc and the radical
confrontation (not physical but with words - right away they were told to
fuck off), was greeted with great applause from the others in the parade -
only the "organizers" of the parade, many of them left-wing politicians, did
not really want this bloc there and had even threatened to call the police.
Protest leaflets complaining about politicians and the "rainbow elite" were
handed out encouraging people to form more horizontal affinity groups, etc..

During the march, there were a few incidents with the fascists who threw some things and, in general were just harassing people. There were at least 150 of them, plus some hooligans. In general they were fairly afraid of agressive confrontation, and only went into action when the bloc was rather far away.

Unfortunately, at the end of the march, first the "organizers" of the parade were trying to demand that people take off masks and then police started arresting people. People tried to explain that since fascists were taking
pictures of them, they did not want to end up on Redwatch and didn't want to take off masks. We don't know if the "organizers" were at all involved in calling the police but we are trying to get reliable information about this.

Some people were arrested. The members of the Anarchist Federation from Bialystok and Lodz were released fairly quickly but two foreigners were not. (One is still in detention. See later.)

Near the police station, unfortunately the anarchists met a busload of fascists. Despite the fact that they outnumbered us nearly three to one, they were a little cautious. Three of them jumped out of the bus and wanted to attack but it was something like macho bullshit and we told them to fuck
off and one guy mooned them, and their friends called them to run away. But
it turned out they were also going to the police station, so we met them again. So then they went to the other side of the street and decided to send a young nazi girl in to the station. When one anarchist started to take
photographs of her, she decided to tell the police that he was threatening to kill her (not true) and she decided to give false testimony to the police which resulted in his arrested and confiscation of the camera. Some
ridiculous stuff followed because the head of the nazis was publishing crazy stories about this on IMC (which no, does not hide posts written by nazis) but we published some pictures and biography. It turns out that the leader of the nazis had run for office from League of Polish Families in 2002 but
received only 28 votes - right in last place. After this failure, he decided to become a little fuhrer. After publishing this info, the nazis got mad and started to threaten people, attack a meeting in Lodz, etc.. (No, death threats by nazis are also not hidden on IMC.) So the nazis and busy on all
their internet forums telling crazy stories.

RK., who came from Germoney to support the parade is still in detention with rather serious charges and may not be let out soon. The Prosecutor is breaking all procedural rules, like not meeting with the lawyer and
presenting charges, etc. For example, there was supposed to be a meeting today, but the Prosecutor just put it off until tomorrow. As of yet, nobody has been able to see RK, not even a lawyer. The police even went so far to
claim that he is not entitled to a phone call. RK is being charged with beating a police officer, which probably means that he was beaten and pushed the police off him. This probably means that the police and judiciary are trying to harrass him more.

Amazingly, today the fascistic Mlodziez Wszechpolska (MW) decided to ask the
Prosecutor to file charges against the bloc! The say that members of the pink and black bloc were attacking members of the onlooking public with sticks and pepper spray!!! He wants to clarify why weren't immediately
kicked out of the parade. They showed some films from the parade, but only people shouting that the fascists' time is over. They also want the politicians who went to explain how they could stand next to terrorists. To his credit, at least Robert Biedron (from SLD and the Campaign Against
Homophobia) acted with decency and said that nobody from the public or the MW was hurt but it was the people from the parade who were attacked.

The leader of MW was spotted eating at a restaurant near the parade and had a small film crew taking pictures. At least one person yelled at him to stop it, and making this was what he considered "a brutal attack".

There was one small incident, but not really violent when somebody found Adam Gmurczyk, the leader of NOP calling the shots over a mobile phone. The "aggression" was not really serious as he immediately called the police. But it is possible that he complained to the MW about this.

In one last absurd moment, this time not related to anarchists but to the SLD, the League of Polish families also want to charge her --- because she paraphrased Pope John Paul at the parade. She said something like, "Let this parade help the world recover, this world" which was some paraphrase of something the Pope once said. This harmless sentence became a front page
scandal and even the head of the SLD distanced themselves from this and
apologized for such an outrageous thought.

* Follow-up: the star witness for MW about "brutal attacks on citizens" turns out to be a famous nationalist, anti-semitic nutjob against "Eurosodomy" who was agressively confronting the crowd - maybe even violently. After a confrontation, he apparently was sprayed with some pepper gas in his eye. This guy is known for writing crazy letters about the "crimes" committed against him (we have copies of some of them, including one he had written just a week before)and, to put it mildly, his accusations seem to be paranoid rantings.