Women’s rights defenders in Poland have faced violence from law enforcement and far-right groups, as well as smear campaigns in state-controlled media and excessive criminal charges. This harassment has been orchestrated and encouraged by the government.

This is Iwona's story.

For Iwona, the last six months have been the toughest of her life – emotionally, physically and financially. Iwona has been actively involved in the Women’s Strike movement – the biggest women and social justice movement revolt since the 80s – in a small town with 60,279 inhabitants – ever since Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal, dominated by right-wing judges and backed by Julia Przyłębska who presides over the illegitimate Constitutional Tribunal, banned abortion on the grounds of foetal abnormality on 22 October 2020.

Since then, the teacher turned activist has organised six “Walk for Freedom and Women’s Rights” protests in her home city. The first of these was held on Sunday 25 October amassing around two thousand people.

Three days later, after President Kaczynski's famous "address", where he urged Neo Nazis to defend the churches from “Bad feminist abortion b**ches from hell”, about 5,000 people came to "walk" with the activist, holding a banner: "Forgive the obstruction, Tczew has a government to overthrow".

Someone Had To Light The First Match

As the headmistress of a non-public school, she was previously only known within the teaching community. Iwona had yet to catch on to the growing feminist movement in Poland kickstarted by the first All-Poland Women’s Strike (Ogólnopolski Strajk Kobiet, OSK) in 2016 against proposed legislation to tighten abortion laws. However, two years later she was protesting to defend courts free from political influence, the rights of teachers, and the rights of LGBTQI+ people. She travelled to Poland’s Tri-City area for Manifa, an annual demonstration organized around International Women’s Day on March 8 and across Poland for Gay Pride marches.

There have never been such large-scale demonstrations in Tczew before, especially anti-government ones. Iwona admits that she herself was surprised by the turnout and the response to the slogan: “I took part in the protests anonymously, without party symbols. First in a rainbow mask, then one bearing a lightning bolt. I didn’t want to appear party-affiliated. The demands were more important than the emblems. My data was later leaked by a Tczew paper, the local propaganda mouthpiece of the PiS (Law and Justice) Party.”

Tczew has a population of around 53,000. During one of the protests Iwona “brought” almost 10% of the community onto the streets, much to the annoyance of a prominent and unscrupulous Member of Parliament (MP) from PiS, who is also a dangerous Catholic fundamentalist, chauvinist and homophobe. The activist and her entire family were immediately affected by the street actions.

PiS Won’t Forgive And Forget

Soon after the first protests, Iwona’s husband lost his job at a state-owned company.

“His qualifications relate to big industry, which at the moment either has ties to the authorities or belongs to the authorities,” says Iwona.

In response, on 15 November, over 300 people took to the streets of Tczew in solidarity. Although encouraging, it did little to change the situation. He became one of the “unemployables”. In turn, a government-run campaign was unleashed against her and continues. Disciplinary proceedings against her by the Board of Education are underway. In November, she was officially charged with incitement to animal abuse. An absurd move, which was orchestrated by the same fundamentalist PiS MP,  Kazimierz Smolinski. Over several months, the teacher has been summoned to successive “hearings” at the Department of Education. She is now at risk of losing her teaching licence. This is a textbook example of the regime’s repression of rebellious citizens.