The murder of Adamowicz, a staunch defender of minority rights at a time of rising levels of hate crime and an ardent liberal critic of the ruling conservative party’s anti-immigrant politics, has provoked an anguished and often ill-tempered national debate about hate speech and polarisation in Poland’s deeply divided society. [...]
Adamowicz rose to prominence in 1988 as a law student at the University of Gdańsk, where he led a student strike in solidarity with workers striking in the city’s shipyard. “It was a period when people were tired of communism but they were also tired of fighting communism,” recalled Wojciech Szeląg, now a broadcaster, who participated in the strike. “It wasn’t a time of hope, it was a time you could paint only in grey. But I remember thinking that if people like Adamowicz were involved, it was worth it.” [...]
A committed Catholic with a background in conservative politics, he frequently defended his robust stance on minority rights in religious terms, incensing many on the Polish right, including elements of the Polish Catholic church. “In this festive season, I will try to explain to my compatriots in Gdańsk that the arrival of Christ was the very example of migration,” he told a meeting of the European Committee of the Regions in December 2016.
“It is very rare to challenge the church but it is even more rare to challenge the church on the basis of its own social teachings,” said Marta Abramowicz, an LGBT activist and co-founder of Poland’s Campaign Against Homophobia, who moved to Gdańsk from Warsaw in 2010. “He didn’t just support us, he supported us proudly and openly, he said that it was important that we were a part of Gdańsk.”
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