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Poland: LGBT-FREE ZONES PROJECT

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I am Bart Staszewski and I am an LGBT activist and documentary film director.
In 2017, I produced a documentary film - Article 18. It is the most important documentary of LGBT struggle for equality in Poland.  I am one of the organizers of the Equality March in Lublin, which was the first march of this kind to take place in eastern Poland. See more from the project

Recently Poland has witnessed an unprecedented wave of institutionalized homophobia. A sizeable number of local governments have declared their regions LGBT-free zones by means of passing legal acts (see below for example of such act) which serve to stigmatize and exclude members of the LGBT community. As of August 2019, Poland has seen around 30 copy-paste-like  LGBT-free zone declarations passed, including four voivodeships in the south-east of the country: Lesser Poland, Podkarpackie, Świetokrzyskie, and Lublin. As of now the LGBT-free zone landscape has risen to around 90 regions.

My photographic project is an attempt at showing real-life effects of these symbolic legal acts.
Although Zones are real, the road sign is prepared by Bart Staszewski to put a human face to cruel homophobic legislation.  The LGBT-free zone project is meant to be read as a visualisation of the new law introduced in Poland and to raise awareness about the violation of LGBT rights in those areas both locally and internationally.

Declarations made by municipalities  are acts of opposition to equality, respect, and tolerance. City or province councils pass them under the guise of defending Christian values, schools, and the traditional family model against the influence of the so-called LGBT ideology and LGBT officers. Our project is meant to dispel this false myth: there is no LGBT ideology and no LGBT officers. We want to show the human face behind this inhumane right-wing newspeak, spread awareness within and beyond the LGBT community, and invite everyone to a fact-driven national discussion of LGBT rights understood as inherently human rights. ​​​​​​​

In my project, at the beginning I will go to 37 municipalities and towns throughout Poland, with a view to documenting LGBT people that come from there. This is an important moment in the history of the struggle for equality - it must be documented.

In December 2019, the EU Parliament, in it's resolution against Poland, strongly condemned ‘‘LGBTI-free zones’’ in Poland and clearly stated that Poland should revoke resolutions attacking LGBTI rights. More on this here.