Neighborhood watches to protect Polish churches amid protests: report

Special neighborhood watch groups will be set up across Poland to protect churches amid ongoing street protests over abortion rights, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency has reported.

A slogan spray-painted on the wall of a Warsaw church reading "Abortion Without Borders."

Photo: PAP/Leszek Szymański

It cited the niezalezna.pl website as saying that the plan was being coordinated by a network of regional groups linked to the conservative Gazeta Polska weekly.

The aim is to protect churches and monuments against devastation, activists have said.

The initiative comes after Polish conservative leader Jarosław Kaczyński on Tuesday called on supporters to defend churches, warning that “attacks” by pro-abortion protesters on places of worship aimed to "destroy Poland.”

“We have to defend Polish churches, we have to defend them at all cost,” Kaczyński said, after five straight days of demonstrations against a court ruling that signaled a tightening of the country’s already-strict abortion laws.

The street protests were sparked by a decision last week by the country’s Constitutional Tribunal that would ban abortion in the case of fetal defects.

Activists opposed to tightened abortion rules have staged protests during church services in Warsaw and other Polish cities, spray-painting slogans on the exterior walls of church buildings.

(gs/pk)

Source: IAR