Complaint filed after Slovakia police hinder pro-life protest

Bratislava, Slovakia, Dec 19, 2008 / 23:30 pm

The Center for Bioethical Reform in Slovakia has filed a complaint with the Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic alleging that the Slovak Ministry of the Interior and the Police Corps committed serious free speech violations against them.

According to the complaint, police in the city of Kosice on October 16 forced pro-life activists at the University of Kosice to remove the display of twelve large frame-mounted billboards, a press release from the Center for Bioethical Reform (CBR) Europe reports. The billboards showed aborted children juxtaposed with images of other genocides including the holocaust and the Soviet gulag.

The police, who threatened immediate confiscation of the billboards, reportedly outnumbered the activists three to one.

The display is part of the project Stop Genocide, which has toured Slovakian universities and music festivals since the summer. The exhibition reportedly had full municipal council permission at the time of the police action.

"Genocide is invariably presented as something happening somewhere else or in times past but the reality is that genocide is taking place here today in Slovakia where abortion has already claimed the lives of a third of the existing population," said Jana Tutkova, campaign director. "As a nation it is not easy to come face to face with the killing going on our own soil but we have had an overwhelmingly positive response from the students, many of whom have changed their minds by being confronted with the reality and thousands of them have joined the campaign."

The Slovak Ministry said the campaign was against public morality because it showed abortion images in public, CBR Europe reports.

However, Frantisek Tondra, Bishop of Spis and chairman of the Slovak Bishops’ Conference, supported the campaign, saying "I accept this campaign for it shows the real face of abortion."

Tutkova responded to the government’s charge, arguing "If the procedure is legal and subsidized by the state and even claimed to be a human right then how on earth can the authorities claim its depiction to be immoral?"

"This is pure hypocrisy on the part of the government. Taking this approach they would have to admit that abortion is a violence which kills new human beings, but this is precisely what they deny. By attempting to hide the truth, the police and the government have made themselves complicit in the killing and this has to be challenged."

"We will not be cowed by police aggression but will fight to the utmost to defend our right to expose the truth about the abortion genocide," Tutkova said.

The display was adapted from the U.S.-based Center for Bioethical Reform’s Genocide Awareness Project.