The battle runs through the courts
Denis Hills
POLITICAL TRIALS IN POLAND 1981-1986 by Andrzej Swidlicki
Croom Helm, £25
Andrzej Swidlicki, a journalist with Radio Free Europe in Munich, has written his book with the support of the Airey Neave Memorial Trust. In it he analyses the judicial and penal measures used by General Jaruzelski's regime to break up the Solidarity movement. He concludes that Jaruzelski's strategy of 'normalisation' — though it has had some immediate successes — can never satisfy the Polish nation's aspirations for true self- determination under freedom of the law. There may be little overt violence at the moment. But 'quiet forms of repression' such as the employment policy, financial penalties, foreign travel controls and sur- veillance at the work-place ensure that Poland is still an Insovereign' state. The author's theme is that Poland is ruled by a system imported from the Soviet Union with the primary aim of guaranteeing Soviet domination in 'the Polish corridor'. The brave but short-lived resistance by Solidarity before it was suspended by martial law (13 December, 1981) has ended in the 'reconquest' of Polish society by the totalitarian one-party state. The political trials which the author discusses were part of the backbone of the martial law system. Swidlicki quotes Colonel Kostrzewa, mar- tial law commissar at the Ministry of Justice, as saying: `The front line of the battle runs through the courts'.
Martial law put an end to strikes as an effective weapon and they were replaced by demonstrations. 'We have to protest,' asserted a spokesman, 'not because we believe our protests will lead to a free Poland — indeed they won't — but be- cause no honest person can accept lawless- ness' — the absence of freedom of express- ion and of assembly. Martial law ushered in a hectic time for the police and prosecu- tors whose job it was to hunt out and convict the underground Solidarity activ- ists. Most of the arrests, we learn, were due to carelessness on the part of those in hiding or to tip-offs to the police by informers. Police investigators used the familiar techniques of cajolery and black- mail. Defence lawyers were harassed and overworked. Many trials concerned the distribution of clandestine leaflets. Stu- dents and pupils were frequently engaged in circulating them.
With Solidarity crushed as an organisa- tion it could only exist as an idea, a faith and a philosophy. The Church became the repository of people's hopes. The govern- ment's response was to attack priests for `political clericalism'. Some were impris- oned or detained, their premises searched, their movements watched. Crosses were removed from schools, offices and public buildings (`the war of the crosses'). Father Popieluszko of St Stanislaw Kostka's church in Warsaw became — even in death — the government's most eloquent oppo- nent. `No one can be silent when Caesar reaches out to take away the things that belong to God, that is, the hearts and minds of the people,' he said from his pulpit. The suave government spokesman Jerzy Urban called this turbulent young preacher the `Savonarola of anti- Communism'. A few weeks later (19 Octo- ber, 1984) Popieluszko was abducted and murdered by three secret police officers. His triumph is that his grave lit by guttering oil wicks has become a place of pilgrimage Ca small Czestochowa') for the whole Polish nation.
The author reminds us that Poland's security services were formally set up in October 1944 under a decree of the Lublin Committee (`Stalin's stooges'). The appar- atus was staffed by NKVD officers and used to destroy the underground Home Army, the pre-war intelligentsia and Miko- lajczyk's Peasant Party. From the Bolshe- viks it inherited the tradition of beating and torture during investigations. The vic- tim was forced to condemn himself through his own 'confession'. When Bierut died (1956) the security machine was reorga- nised and its excesses curbed. But it played an important part in quelling riots and unrest in Poznan (1956), among students (1968), on the Baltic coast (1970) and over food prices in Radom and Ursus (1976). The first ZOMO riot police units were formed after the violent clashes with Poz- nan workers. A notorious case was that of Przemyk, a Warsaw schoolboy, who was beaten to death (14 May, 1983) at a police station after celebrating with friends a successful exam result. Doctors found mas- sive internal injuries. Fifty thousand peo- ple staged a demonstration at his funeral. At the trial the police were acquitted, the doctors found guilty of unintentional negli- gence and then amnestied, two ambulance men were gaoled.
The author describes the poor prison conditions: bad food, lack of air and exercise, inadequate medical care. Many prisoners released under the amnesty of July 1983 were found to be suffering from skin mycosis (caused by fungi), food poisoning and deterioration of eyesight after long incarceration in dark cells. From the police point of view the model prisoner was one who did not show solidarity with his fellows when they were mistreated or punished.
Swidlicki writes as an opponent of Po- land's present regime and the corrupt practices of the legal system. He relentless- ly attacks the injustices exemplified, for instance, in the trial of the three leading Solidarity personalities Frasyniuk, Lis and Michnik (Lech Walesa called the trial 'an act of state terrorism'). There is indeed an inherent contradiction in a situation where a robustly Catholic society is being ruled by atheist masters; and it is sad for the Poles that on account of their political system they are doomed to lag behind their Western neighbours in freedom and living standards.
Poles have never cared much for the police. At one time Poland's police were servants of the Tsar or the Kaiser. Today they are servants of a Communist regime. As a man who tends to be mistrustful as well as defiant, the hard-drinking Polish citizen has a special dislike of being bul- lied, nagged at, checked and controlled by pan glina — the officer of the law and by petty authorities. Yet the police and secur- ity services are everywhere, in vans, on foot, in patrol cars and lurking among the crowds, stopping motorists, watching the queues, questioning people who are out at night. My own recent memory of the Polish police is a depressing one. At the end of both my encounters with them I was given orders to leave the country within 48 hours. The second expulsion took place on the eve of Christmas. I had been looking forward to eating my stuffed goose with friends. Instead I was turned out into a wintry countryside in a van with a broken battery and had to steer between the snow fields by moonlight.
Previous page
