 I am Bart Staszewski, I'm living in Poland, I'm 31 years old, I'm an LGBT activist and actually I face many consequences of my activism. We are at my home and this is my lovely space, this is the only place where I feel secure on a very daily basis because when the worst time was actually 2019 I was just thinking when the police would come for me. I became a defender of the LGBT rights when I was 20 years old. I was very nervous about the LGBT NGOs doing everything wrong. It was in my imagination that they were doing wrong. I came into the idea that maybe I could join them and do something about it if I think it's wrong. At 2016 I made my first documentary, article 18 actually. It's about the article 18 of the Polish Constitution which says that March is a union between the men and women and so is protected by the state. We made a documentary about this going very deep, trying to explain why it's happened so that 30 years after solidarity, 30 years after democracy in Poland we still don't have any kind of rights in Poland. Since 2016 I started to be more and more dedicated to the activism. I together with my friends started the first Pride in Lublin which was my hometown and it was very important for me because my hometown for myself was something very grey, some kind of, maybe not a nightmare but something very deep in my past which I wanted to forget about this. Suddenly when I heard about the group which is trying to make a very first Pride over there in the East part of Poland, very conservative one. So I told myself that I wanted to be part of that. And I started the Pride which was a very beautiful thing. It ended in a riot because there was many hooligans attacking us but on the other hand it was very important to happen and so there was no third Pride parade in Lublin where there was no hooligans at all. And I think this is the change. This is our small struggle which happened over there. Something that made us to be an activist. This story made me think that you always need to fight for yourself. It will never, it will be not given to you. You will need to fight for it. When Law and Justice came into power in 2015 nobody expected that they would target so much LGBT people. The war here was 2018 actually and it happened during the presidential election. We was a target of an incredible hate campaign. They started to create places that were clear to fight with the so-called LGBT ideology commonly known as LGBT free zones. And they were very proud about this phrase at that time. They have no problem with calling them LGBT free zones. There were many interviews made with the land justice politicians who were declaring that Poland without LGBT people would be beautiful. I mean it was horrible statement. It should never happen in the Europe in the 21st century. But it happened many times. Different codes, different jokes, all the times about LGBT people so we also under the constant attack feeling that we are second category citizens not knowing what will the future be. So I was thinking that if they are so proud about being themselves so homophobic and creating those so-called LGBT free zones so let's make it happen, let's make it visible actually. Let's put the mirror to those horrible homophobic faces. So I created a yellow sign which was like an outcome of those homophobic resolutions and I put it under the name of those municipalities who declare with those horrible statements. I also wanted to give the voice to those LGBT people living over there to make their statement bold, visible because nobody was asking them before to speak out. I posted those pictures like in January 2020 and it went viral. I mean nobody expected it to be so I was just making those photos to highlight those resolutions and suddenly it became an international story. It was the very first time when I was so visible there was so many journalists around me and of course the current government propaganda started to lose. Their aim was to show Poland as a country where everybody is equal no matter what everybody is telling. We are the proud country of the proud history. And so it started to be one big propaganda story and after we became visible and our voice started to be a part of the debate. So also for me it means that I got lawsuits from those municipalities which was encouraged by the Minister of Education of Poland who told many times that Bart Staszewski should be sued by those municipalities and so it happened. The lawsuits for defamation happened to me. The friends of mine who created the map of Poland, a virtual map of Poland collecting all of those places who declared with the LGBT Frison Act got seven lawsuits. Prime Minister of Poland described me as a fake newsmaker. Public TV blamed me for every penny that Poland lost having those declarations. Of course it's about the European funds and Norwegian funds that have been cancelled for Poland because of those LGBT reasons. So it was a very easy propaganda story in Poland that because of my story Poland is losing something. Go to the Netherlands, go to some countries where you have full equality. I still feel that I have job to do here and it's my country. I will not be one of those who has been by force put it out of this country. So you can imagine when your face is broadcasted in the prime time in the public TV which is watched by many millions of polls and then you get many threats on the internet. There are threats that you need to be careful when you are going out because you are anti-Polish and therefore we need to make something with you because Polish courts is not something we can depend on. They are full of the communists and we need to make justice in our own hands. I make many compliments to the police about those threats I got. I don't believe that police is very interested in taking this case seriously those cases against those threats I got. So I feel not secure and I don't feel protected by the police. It's very hard to answer why I'm doing this and why I'm doing this despite what is happening around me. I think that I am one of those who are powered by the people who are supporting me. I think that my biggest success was so far to highlight the homophobia in Poland highlight the problem of LGBT reasons and the homophobic politicians and to get a feedback that we are not alone. It was our success that this solidarity that came back to us and I think that it's very important to us to feel that we are not alone in this battle that it's not just about Poland, it's just about the future of Europe. As activists we devoted, we dedicated our souls to this battle we dedicated our time, this prosecution that we got, these trials that happened it's worth something. One of the biggest successes of my and my fellow friends is that there is no more LGBT reasons actually. Those who are left are few. The biggest of them, the province LGBT reasons have been delayed, we draw by the community telling that it was a mistake, we are for the LGBT rights. I know that politicians used to lie and I don't believe in those declarations but it's our success. By our pressure, by our effort, we made it. I believe that we are not an alone island. We have relationships. We build a community around Poland. We have European Union, UN, many international bodies who are to protect people's rights to feel safe actually in their own countries. The more I see the Polish government is closing to the put in Russia and to the Hungary, to Orban Hungary that's why I'm afraid of the future of what happened then. We are risking actually to be for some reason put it outside of the European Union in the mass to live it, to work on the LGBT rights. We need to be at the table, not just speaking about this. I think that Poland need to choose if we are the part of the European Union and we acknowledge that LGBT rights are human rights so we should be equal or not. And so we are apart from the society, European Union group and other bodies that we think that are important. We are making our best. We dedicated our lives since many years now to this fight and I think that we deserve to be at least listened and our advice acknowledged. But I see these young faces on the protests and I think that it will be sooner than later to change this government and to have this equality in next years I think because it's just a political will which we are lacking and this is all we want.