Along with obligatory face masks, the women sported clothing, bags, posters and banners festooned with familiar symbols of Poland’s feminism movement: lightning bolts, umbrellas, clothes hangers, clenched fists and images of uteruses giving the finger.

Such symbols came to prominence in 2016 when an ultraconservative citizen’s initiative sought to tighten Poland’s abortion law, sparking mass demonstrations known as the Black Protests.

Four years later, another ultraconservative initiative is seeking once more to toughen the abortion law by banning terminations of malformed fetuses, which constitute the vast majority of legal abortions performed today.

The draft bill is in parliament thanks to a campaign that gathered almost a million signatures. A second draft law, meanwhile, could potentially introduce prison sentences for sex education teachers.

Both bills have the backing of the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), which has put conservative social values at the heart of its political agenda.

The protest outside Cezar last Wednesday showed that Polish activists are finding unexpected ways to make their voices heard despite the government’s draconian lockdown to limit the spread of COVID-19. 

Under restrictions in place at the time of the protest, people were only allowed to leave the house to go to the shop, take a short walk or fulfill other “basic necessities of life”. 

“Join the line in front of the Cezar shop, if you have to sort out a basic necessity of life,” said an invitation to protest posted on a Facebook group shortly before the gathering. 

That is exactly how Marta Lempart, an activist from the Polish Women’s Strike movement who helped organise the pop-up protest, sees opposition to the draft law, which she says affects women’s health, life choices and dignity, she said.

Women formed similar lines in front of supermarkets and other stores across Poland last week — many holding signs as they went about their regular grocery shopping.

On April 14, Polish feminists made headlines by blocking traffic at Rondo Dmowskiego, the intersection of Warsaw’s two main boulevards. Responding to a call on social media, they paralysed traffic at noon as they stopped their cars and bikes adorned with banners.

According to Lempart, police issued fines to almost 100 activists for taking part in this and other protests, which authorities said contravened traffic laws or social distancing rules (fines for breaching the latter are as high as 6,600 euros).

“We’ll fight these fines in court,” Lempart told BIRN. “We’ve been doing this for years. We’ll argue that the restrictions are actually illegal, that limiting our rights has no basis in the constitution because the government never declared a state of emergency. They didn’t do it because they still want to still hold presidential elections in May.”

We’ll fight these fines in court. We’ve been doing this for years.

– Marta Lempart, Polish Women’s Strike

She added that the activists had been careful to observe the social distancing rules, keeping two metres apart or never getting out of their cars, for example.

“But we’ll also explain that for us, these actions were about the necessities of life,” she said.

Lawmakers passed both draft laws to parliamentary commissions for further work — an outcome the activists see as a victory since the legislation could be tied up in the commissions for a long time, perhaps even to the end of the current parliament.

Women in the city of Gdansk take part in a car protest against the tightening of Poland’s abortion law. Photo: EPA/EFE Adam Warszawa

Creativity under lockdown

Lempart, who has been a prominent organiser of women’s protests since 2016, says the lockdown has forced activists to get creative.

Since the Black Protests in 2016, Polish feminists have stayed connected through an informal nationwide network and have remained active on various issues. But the pandemic brought unprecedented challenges to mobilising.

On April 11, Lempart hosted an eight-hour online event dubbed “Protest without break” (#protestbezprzerwa), which she says was key to setting the stage for subsequent actions.

Lempart interviewed 48 activists, writers and journalists in quick succession while 100,000 people watched via a livestream on Facebook. Lempart is convinced the virtual meeting reactivated the trust needed for women to take part in the street protests that followed.

“These protests were different because this time we had to have things really, really under control,” Lempart said.

“Usually we don’t control people so much; we provide the tools and let people act on their own. This time around, there were the health risks, the restrictions, and we were also afraid someone might organise a provocation to compromise us, so we issued really precise recommendations about how people should go about things. It is a success that people did what we said, without much questioning.”

She added: “The circumstances also made protests more creative. In normal conditions, we provide, for example, a design for posters and people just print them. But now people are at home and don’t have printers, so they had to paint or draw things on their own to hang on their balconies or cars. There was so much more creativity. The design bubble spread very far.”

Lempart concluded: “I think our actions brought people some hope. If worse things are coming — like changes to the constitution or of electoral law — we’ll know we’re capable of opposing.”

In 2016, tens of thousands of women protested in the so-called Black Protest against efforts to tighten Poland’s abortion law. File photo: EPA/EFE JACEK TURCZYK

‘Exclusively online’

The next big challenge for activists is Poland’s presidential election, scheduled for May 10. With incumbent President Andrzej Duda, a PiS loyalist, riding high in the polls, PiS is keen to press ahead with the vote despite the pandemic.

After backing down from an initial plan to go ahead with the election as normal, PiS has offered the opposition two options: hold the vote entirely by post or change the constitution to extend Duda’s term by another two years.

Although many Poles oppose the government and criticism has been rife about the risks of organising an election during a pandemic, activists are unsure if they will be able to put enough pressure on PiS to delay the poll.

Bogumil Kolmasiak, a new media specialist at Akcja Demokracja, a prominent campaigning organisation, said his team was exploring options. 

On April 11, Akcja Demokracja asked Poles to take part in a “Let’s postpone elections” event. People leant out of their windows or went out onto their balconies to play a synchronised alarm bell on their mobile phones. They also hung banners calling for the election to be postponed.

Kolmasiak declared the event a success. Some 5,000 people signed up to join the event and around 200 sent video clips or photos to Akcja Demokracja.

Kolmasiak said this type of protest under lockdown was uniquely challenging as it involved people being politically active from their homes, exposing their views to neighbours or passersby from what is usually a safe, intimate space. 

“This is the first time we organised an action exclusively online during the pandemic, and our actions usually combine online and offline activities. We treat this one as a dress rehearsal for what will come next, and we expect every further action to be bigger.”

According to Kolmasiak, a recent Akcja Demokracja appeal to email lawmakers about the abortion draft law led to almost three million emails being sent, which “pretty much crashed the website” of the group. 

“With isolation measures in place, we have so many people simply sitting at home and hanging out online, and this is a huge potential that we are thinking a lot about how to best use,” he said. “This sad situation is also an opportunity to learn new forms of activism. There is lots of space for creativity.”

This sad situation is also an opportunity to learn new forms of activism. There is lots of space for creativity.

– Bogumil Kolmasiak, Akcja Demokracja

Obywatele RP, a civic group involved in pro-democracy protests since PiS came to power in 2015, has said that if the poll goes ahead by post in May, its members will publicly destroy their ballots. 

“We call on all those who plan to take part in the elections or their organisation, actively or passively, to boycott the poll,” Obywatele RP said in an online statement. “We warn the government to put an end to this farce and focus on the real management of this crisis.” 

Opposition parties are divided over how best to deal with the presidential election. On Monday, the main opposition force, Civic Coalition, proposed holding the vote next spring. 

Meanwhile, anti-government voters are debating what to do if the election does go ahead by post in May. The question is whether to boycott the vote altogether, thus paving the way for a Duda victory, or take part despite profound misgivings about a pandemic election.

A possible strike by postal voters could prove a dealbreaker. Union representatives have expressed concerns about the extra risk posed to their workers, already on the frontlines, by having to deliver the ballots for the nationwide poll just as the epidemic reaches its peak.

The leader of the postal workers’ union told Polish media that workers were considering a go-slow strike on the day of the vote, with employees working to rule. Such a strike could cause severe disruptions to the election, which experts say is likely to be marred by logistical difficulties anyway.