Poland’s top hate crime is xenophobia, then racism, religion, LGBT

According to an investigation by the Ministry of the Interior into 314 hate crimes, xenophobia makes up the majority, followed by racism, then religion, then lesbian / gay.

These figures are from 2014. The Ministry for the protection of human rights “Ochrona Praw Człowieka” has been recording statistics since 2004. The government have, since the end of 2013, been taking a much closer look at the statistics, in order to plan its programme for equal treatment.
 

2014 hate crime victims – Ministry of the Interior

The sample comes from reports from private individuals, non-governmental organisations, and monitoring the media.

Another view comes from the General Prosecutor’s Office “Prokuratura Generalna”, who measures hate crime based on prosecutions with a sample size of 1365.
 

2014 hate crime victims – General Prosecutor’s Office

Last year, the Ministry team found only four crimes of hatred toward LGBT people, all of which have been well publicised.

They were specifically: disruption of the promotion of the book Anna Grodzka in Warsaw, the arson of the Rainbow of the Saviour monument in Warsaw, the murder of a homosexual person in Szczecin and the beating up of Robert Biedroń, a former member of parliament and currently President of Słupsk.

Why are the crime victims so rarely LGBT people? Experts explain this in different ways, depending on the disputing parties and their affiliations.

Bartosz Lewandowski of the conservative “Instytut na rzecz Kultury Prawnej Ordo” says:

The Problem of violence against LGBT people was exaggerated by the gay community. They have a high legal awareness, are up to date with legislation and the case law of the Court. Certainly they report all cases of breaches of their rights, to the public prosecutor’s Office.

Tomasz Szypuła, former Chairman of the campaign against Homophobia, in turn, draws attention to the fact that in Poland homosexual people are not covered by legal protection against hate speech. This means that such insults are not able to be prosecuted, as in the case of for example, anti-semitism.

As a result, the public prosecutor’s Office carry out only the reported cases which actually break laws, which lowers the stats. However, first and foremost comes the problem of double victimisation. By signing up to the police in a small town, an injured person who is LGBT not only must inform them about the crime, but also it means coming-out before they can explain to an officer.

The Ministry says that Police will undergo sensitivity training as one of the Ministry for the protection of human rights investigation’s recommmendations.

Hinting at an opinion that LGBT groups have an axe to grind, Lewandowski concludes:

Whether gay organisations like it or not, the main problem [in Poland] is violence with regard to race or religion.

 
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