The regime steps up repression estimate the difficulties it has been experiencing for many months, difficulties which have been aggravated by the scope and brutality of the repression that has been coming down on Solidarnose's organising centres.
Today the political police are not content to do their dirty work by spying on
On July 13 the trial of four well-known militants of the Workers Defence Committee (KOR) - Jacek Kuron, Adam Michnik, Henryk Wujec and Zbigniew Romaszewski - will begin (see International Viewpoint,
No 38, October 17, 1983). These people have been imprisoned for two and a half years without being brought before the courts as have the jailed leaders of Solidarnosc who are still awaiting a trial date
(see IV, No 23, February 7, 1983).
well known that in order to get rid of this embarassing case, the
It Is authorities have not been above using the worst kind of blackmail, trying to tempt the eleven to emigrate. In this case, they tried to string the jall.
ed leaders along by holding out a promise of freedom for all political prisoners on July 22, the date of the annual commemoration of the founding of the Peoples Republic of Poland. Nothing came of it. These people displayed courage and dignity at every turn. In the name of the struggle they were pursuing, even in prison, for the right to independent organisation and for Solidarnose's demands, they refused to accept any kind of compromise with the bureaucracy.
Jacqueline ALLIO
What is taking place in Poland today is process of normalisaobviously not a tion', as the authorities are so fond of declaring but one of repression. Indeed, the regime seems to have an extraordinneed for repression to impose its ary
If any test were needed to show how little success this policy is having with the masses, the municipal and regional elections on June 17 provid-
According to Solidarnosc, more than ten million people boycotted the election.
The authorities announced a 25 per cent
However, the figures abstention rate.
the underground union collected by through an extremely systematic watch on the polling stations, involving a rota of
Polish soldiers on patrol (DR)
activists who took three turns of five minutes each throughout the day, draw a very different picture. They point to an average abstention rate of 40 per cent with rates as high as 50 per cent in several large towns.
Moreover, to grasp the full scope of the movement of resistance to Jaruzelski that this boycott reflected, you have to take into account the media campaign 'encouraging' people to vote and the reprisals which were threatened if they did
Lech Walesa had suggested that he might 'retire from the political scene if the results amounted to a repudiation of Solidarnose's underground activity. Now, he has no reason to carry out his threat. In the event, it was the author ities, not Solidarnose, who got a kick in people, following and stopping all sus pects accused of writing or intending to write, print and distribute underground literature or participate in underground radio emissions. harassing individual militants suspected of underground activity in the factories, universities and schools. systematic physical violence during interrogation and not hesitating to resort to torture in order to extract 'confessions' from the accused
This is what the Lubin miners, accused of terrorist activities, brought to light in describing their experiences; 'Someone hits you with a cosh [truncheon] on the nape of the neck as if it were a hammer. you to kneel on a chair, to raise your hands and to count the blows. Then you lose consciousness.'
In the last few months we have even seen para-police units - similar to those used in Latin America in the 1970s. They are made up of brigades of political police acting under their own author ity, making arrests and carrying out interrogations outside of Interior Ministry premises, for example in the woods.
In one underground press bulletin it reported: •Having arrived in the wood he was tied to a tree and threatened with death. He received blows on the feet and head. Afterwards, he was dragged to an empty hut, handcuffed and then tied to a chair. He was beaten up and his torturers pretended to try to slash his jugular. They threatened that they would report he had died in a car crash.'
Some of these units have taken the name OAS (Anti-Solidarnosc Organisation). This is no accident, since the reputation of the French OAS (Armed Secret Organisation) is well known in Poland, where a series of films and writings told of their 'heroic deeds'. It is to such groups that the murder of Piotr Bartoszcze, a leader of rural Solidarnosc in the Bydgoszez region before December 13, 1981, is attributed. And the underground press records many similar cases.
The authorities have also been taking more and more brutal measures against prisoners in an effort to break their resistance and morale.
Testimony about these practices has come trom Wladislaw Frasyniuk and Piotr Bednarz, leaders of Solidarnose in Wroclaw, as well as several leaders of the continued on page 27
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
POLAND