Far-right logos registered

25th November 2011

Warsaw prosecutors said they would appeal against a court decision allowing a far-right party to register apparently homophobic and racist symbols as their logos.

The prosecutors made their move after the extremist National Rebirth of Poland (NOP) movement came away from the court happy in the knowledge that their controversial symbols were now registered.

One, described by the NOP as the “Celtic cross”, is synonymous with fascist and far-right parties around the world, while the other is of a traffic-sign design, with a crude depiction of two men having sex with a red diagonal line running across it.

“We are at the moment waiting for the written reasons for court’s decision,” said Mateusz Martyniuk, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office. “The next step will be to submit an appeal against the decision of the registry court.”

The prosecutor’s decision was immediately welcomed by Robert Biedron, an MP with the Palikot Movement (RP) and one of Poland’s most high-profile gay activists.

“I am glad that civil society is working and that the state apparatus has woken up and began to function in a way that befits a democratic country; without the succumbing to hatred and the promotion of fascism,” said the MP.

“I hope all the people who failed to take a stand on this reflect on what lies behind these symbols, and at some point repent,” he continued. “Because it may be too late. Because we can’t wait another Breivik - another Norway.”

The court’s decision to register the symbols had sparked fury, with not only gay activist’s spitting condemnation.

In an interview for Radio Zet, Grzegorz Schetyna, a senior member of the ruling Civic Platform (PO) party, accused the judge who made the ruling of failing in his duties, and described the symbols as “unacceptable”.

But the NOP, which calls for racial segregation, describes homosexuality as an “absolute evil” and wants an end to “homosexual deviance”, warned on its website that it would take legal action against any “public or private institutions that insult our symbols.”