Poland is preparing to renounce the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, which the ruling government says is a threat to family values as well as an attack on traditional culture and Christianity.
Marek Jurek, former Speaker of the Sejm and former Law and Justice (PiS) MEP, emphasized that the main reason for Poland to renounce the Istanbul Convention is because it is a gender ideology convention which demands the “uprooting” of traditions and values based on the “stereotypical model of the roles of men and women”.
He pointed out that the most important among those “stereotypes” is marriage and parenthood and that demands to promote non-stereotypical gender roles boils down to the promotion of same-sex marriage, according to news portal Wpolityce.pl.
He warned that the Istanbul Convention is also an assault on freedoms, such as in Spain, where parents have no oversight over public education due to their adherence with the convention.
The former Speaker of the Sejm said that the supporters of the Istanbul Convention rally under its title of “combating violence” whereas in recent days, the opponents and families in opposition to gender ideology have been called “supporter of domestic violence” because they want to protect their children from ideological violence.
“This shows how ruthless of a campaign [that the supporters of the convention] are conducting and how much our freedom is threatened,” he added.
Data from multiple sources routinely shows Poland as one of the safest countries for women in Europe. For example, the European Center for Fundamental Rights indicates that Poland has the second lowest rate of sexual harassment in all the EU.
Violence against women is also low. Despite some claims that women in Poland simply do not report violence committed against them, the country not only has low rates of violence but also high reporting levels.
To those claiming that the low numbers of violence against women in Poland compared to Western Europe are due to Polish women not reporting the violence:
The opposite is true: Poland has some of the lowest numbers even though the reporting is among the highest in Europe.
— Visegrad 24 ???????? (@visegrad24) July 26, 2020
In countries like Great Britain, Asian grooming gangs were abusing underage girls for years before police took action, often with police sources saying that no action was taken because they were afraid of being accused of “racism”. In other words, the issue of reporting serious sexual assaults is not so much an issue in Poland as it is many other European Union countries.
Sweden, are country which ratified the Istanbul Convention, is often upheld for its feminist policies, yet the rise in migrant sex crimes in the country have helped tarnish its reputation, according to both government statistics and investigations by Swedish newspapers.
For example, 58 percent of all rapes that resulted in a conviction over the last five years were committed by those born abroad, a figure that does not even take into account second- or third-generation migrants who were born in the country. Sweden’s rape statistics differ drastically from other regions of Europe that have refused to take in migrants, with 73 per 100,000 citizens reporting a case of rape in 2017, representing a 24 percent increase in the last decade.
In contrast, Hungary has a rate of 3.9 per 100,000 citizens reporting rape in the country. Poland’s rate is even lower, at 3.2 per 100,000. Poland has one of the smallest immigrant populations in Europe as a percentage of the population and the government has rejected multiculturalism in the country.
Hungary’s parliament also already passed a law rejecting the Istanbul Convention this year.
