■ Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczinsky:  “Please come to Poland; visit my country. You can go to clubs, you can ask around, you will not see anything bad”.

WARSAW, August 31, 2006  –  News travel fast.  And following the homophobic Polish Prime Minister’s pronouncement yesterday in Brussels in front of European Commission President José Manuel Barroso that Poland was not a homophobic country, gay men and women in Poland were last night at best bemused and at worst concerned.

Jaroslaw Kaczinsky and his younger identical twin Lech Kaczinsky hold the top two political positions in Poland – Prime Minister and President respectively.

Both are know to be vehemently “anti-gay”, as is their party, the Law and Justice Party and the coalition partner the League of Polish Families.

“Maybe Jaroslaw Kaczinsky and I live in two different countries,” said Robert Biedron, president of Campaign Against Homophobia in Warsaw.

Prime Minister Kaczinsky told a press conference in Brussels yesterday that Anti-Semitic, homophobic and xenophobic Poland “is a myth”.

“Please come to Poland; visit my country,” he said.  “You can go to clubs, you can ask around, you will not see anything bad,” he told journalists after meeting European Commission president José Manuel Barroso.

But Mr. Biedron was quick to point out that the coalition partners of Law and Justice, the League of Polish Families, has been calling for the “isolation of gay activists and representatives of such organisations”.

“Jaroslaw Kaczinsky himself is known as the one politician who is fighting against gay and lesbian rights, and the Law and Justice party was the one that closed down a known gay-club Le Madame,” Mr. Biedron pointed out.

“Maybe Jaroslaw Kaczinsky and I live in two different countries," he said.  “What he was saying in Brussels is certainly not true.  Our Government is trying to use even such measures as drawing a line between organized crime, drugs, paedophiles and gay-rights organisations.”

The Ministry of Education, under the control of far-right League of Polish Families, and has recently sent out official letters to schools stating that they should not allow any meetings with LGBT organisations.  Education Minister Roman Giertych has even gone as far as to publicly announce that he “will do anything in his power to stop such [gay] organisations from getting any public money”.

“While the League of Polish Families and Giertych are working towards eliminating LGBT organisations, the party of the twins has been busy closing down gay-clubs,” Mr. Biedron said.

“In this light, one may really say that “you can go to clubs, you can ask around, you will not see anything bad”, simply because Poland is trying to cover up, and badly,” Mr. Biedron concluded.

Tomek Szypuła, another gay activist in Poland said that Prime Minister Kaczynski is noted for saying what a particular audience wants to hear.

“When he speaks at home, he underlines the traditional model of family and talks about the dangers coming from the EU.  He supports the idea of capital punishment and insists that the bad image of Poland abroad is caused only by western journalists.

“When he goes to Brussels he is a fan of liberal democracy, capitalism and Europe,” Mr. Szypuła said.

“He says that in Poland there is no anti-Semitism and homophobia.  Anybody who has been to Poland can decide who is right and wrong.  His brother Lech twice banned Pride in Warsaw [as Mayor of Warsaw].

“There is even a case pending in Strasbourg against Lech. Kaczynski as a result of the ban on Warsaw Pride in 2005.”

A group of lesbian are currently fighting a case in court with politicians from the Law and Justice Party.

This case comes as a result of a “March for Equality and Tolerance” in Poznan when Law and Justice Party officials said that the march was a “promotion of paedophilia, zoophilia and necrophilia”.

They added that “homosexuality is a disease like alcoholism and drug addiction and shouldn’t be promoted.

The party officials who made the public statements, Jacek Tomczak and Przemyslaw Alexandrowicz, are now Members of Polish Parliament from Law and Justice Party.

“I won't even mention what their coalition partner – League of Polish Families says about homosexuality,” said Mr. Szypuła.  “I will just say one name: Wojciech Wierzejski.”

Wierzejski infamously called, earlier this year, for all gays to be bludgeoned with baseball bats.