WARSAW, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Polish retailers have begun removing some Halloween-themed products such as fake knives from shelves following three recent stabbing attacks at schools, company representatives said on Tuesday.
Thousands of police officers have been deployed to schools since the end of last week after two stabbing incidents involving teenagers on consecutive days.
Politicians have pointed to the negative influence of social media, video games and what Prime Minister Donald Tusk called “a very grim trend of violence”.
In response, some major retailers, including Jeronimo Martins’ Biedronka, Poland’s largest retail chain with about 3,900 stores, said they would scale back their Halloween ranges, removing items such as fake knives and gruesome costumes.
“Guided by concern for the welfare of children and youth, we decided yesterday to withdraw selected Halloween products that may arouse unintended associations,” Biedronka category director Małgorzata Polakowska said.
Children’s retailer Smyk said it was withdrawing accessories featuring motifs that imitate dangerous tools, such as plastic knives and cleavers, across its store network.
“We believe that in the current circumstances, the presence of such items on the shelves of a store whose offer is directed to families is inappropriate,” Smyk said in a statement.
Although Halloween is not a traditional Polish holiday, it is widely celebrated by young people influenced by Western popular culture.
The latest attack occurred on Saturday, when three people were injured at a further education college in Warsaw, Poland’s third stabbing attack at an educational institution in four days.
On Thursday, a 15-year-old former pupil wearing a helmet-mounted camera killed a caretaker and injured two other staff members at a primary school in Leszczydol-Nowiny, northeast of Warsaw. On Wednesday, a 19-year-old wounded 10 people including himself at a school in Ostroleka, north of the capital.
(Reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk and Alicja Surdy; Editing by Gareth Jones)
