A banner was displayed by football fans in Poland declaring a stadium an LGBTQ+ 'free zone' (Sasza Witek)

A football club in Poland’s capital has condemned an “LGBT-free zone” banner which was displayed during a match.

The inflammatory banner appeared during I liga Polonia Warszawa’s home game with Znicz Pruszków at the Kazimierz Sosnkowski Stadium in Warsaw last week, placed by a supporters’ group called Ultras Enigma.

Driven by an increase in anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment by the ruling Law and Justice party, the infamous zones began appearing in 2019 when more than 100 municipalities in the country declared themselves free of “LGBT ideology”, with the authorities banning what they viewed as the promotion of queer rights and equality – labelled homopropaganda.

The zones, coveringone-third of Poland at their height, werecondemned by the European parliament. Municipalities that enacted themwere threatened with funding cuts from the EU, resulting in a numberhaving a change of heart.

In 2022, a top Polish appeals court ruled that four of the zonesmust be abolished, with thefinal one scrapped earlier this year.

Polonia Warszawa released a statement regarding the banner at the game, in which it strongly condemned any form of discrimination.

“There is not and never will be consent to such behaviour at our stadium. Our mission is to create a friendly and safe place for all supporters, regardless of their origin, skin colour, religion or sexual orientation,” the clubsaid.

“The slogan placed on a banner by a group of our supporters during a match against Znicz Pruszków is completely contrary to our values.”

The club went on to say it took “immediate action to identify those responsible for displaying the banner” and the individuals were given two-year stadium bans which “sends a clear message that such behaviour will not be tolerated”.

The statement concluded: “We would also like to emphasise that we will take all possible steps in the future to prevent similar incidents from occurring and to ensure that our stadium remains open to all those wishing to experience football emotions in a cultured atmosphere.”

In response, Ultras Enigmareleased their own statement, taking aim at the wording of the club violation under which they were banned, theLaw on Security of Mass Events, which states they committed a prohibited act such as “preaching and posting slogans with racist content”.

The statement read: “Protecting our children and taking care of the fate of future generations of Poles is not racism. This is an expression of the greatest concern for the health and mental condition of our society. We will not be intimidated and we will use our constitutional law: freedom of speech and possessions guaranteed in it.”

The group labelled the bans an “attempt to blackmail and impose the owner’s harmful worldview” and went on to describe LGBTQ+ rights and equality as the “promotion of deviation, sexualisation of public life, which often lead to serious mental illness and the mutilation of their bodies by children, who are most vulnerable to this extreme ideology.”

They went on to threaten legal action to reverse the bans, adding there “should be a total ban on the promotion of LGBT, gender and woke ideology in Poland”.

Speaking to PinkNews, Sasza Witek, who was at the football match and reported the banner to club officials, said: “After the match, I posted a comment on Facebook under Polonia’s post, where I asked whether the club should definitely follow this path. There were a lot of homophobic comments. I received threats in private messages.

“Nevertheless, several people wrote comments criticising the banner, and the reactions were dominated by likes. I also received information from fans from the stand opposite that they noticed the banner and were angry at it.”

Mikołaj Perz, a Young Left co-ordinator and law student at the University of Warsaw, told PinkNews that these sorts of banners “don’t appear very often at football matches in Poland, but from time to time incidents like this occur”.

He continued: “I think it is worth mentioning that Polonia Warszawa always state that the club is LGBT-friendly and they support LGBT people, they use [the] slogan ‘together beyond divisions’. However, not every Polonia Warszawa fan is that tolerant.”

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• Nov 29 2023

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