Solidarity with political prisoners There were 244 political prisoners in Poland at the beginning of February 1984. Ninety-three of them had already been sentenced to prison, in general for periods of between 3½ and 7 years. The latest reports we have indicate a considerable increase in arrests of people suspected of clandestine union activity in several
One of the towns particularly affected by the latest wave of repression is Wroclaw, the capital of Lower Silesia, a region where the union Solidarnose, and political group Solidarnose', are particularly active.
In the last week of January there were mass strikes and protest actions against the new price rises in many Wroclaw factories, (see articles in this issue of International Viewpoint). Since then there has been a wave of arrests and people taken in for questioning in factories, offices and universities. fore January 10, the secret police questioned around one hundred scientific and cultural figures in Wroclaw who had signed an appeal to international and Polish public opinion in solidarity with the seven national leaders of Solidarnose. and the four KOR activists imprisoned for ten years without trial. Seventeen Solidarnose activists were recently arrested in the small town of Gorzow. In Torun, four Solidarnose members were taken, beaten and threatened with death before finally being released.
Warsaw, Lublin, Szczecin and Cracow have not escaped this repression. The Polish media announces new arrests of Solidarnose members every week. The bureaucracy also harasses lawyers. There are more and more suspensions, attacks by 'unidentified wrongdoers', burglaries and arrests of those who undertake the defence of Solidarnose members.
The repression also hits at activists from the independent peasant movement. On December 11, 1983, the president of the National Resistance Committee of Peasants, 71-year old Jozef Teliga, was arrested. Teliga was a leader of the anti-Nazi resistance and a political prisoner during the 1950s.
The body of Piotr Bartoszcze, a unionist of the Bydgoszcz region, was found in a mine on February 9. No one disagrees with the assumption that he was murdered by the secret
He was not the first victim of the wave of terror. school student Grzegorz Przemyk last spring, another, Andrzej Debski, fatally beaten by a militia patrol, died in a Warsaw hospital at the beginning of
In many prisons - Barczewo, Braniewo, Strzelin — there have been hunger the imprisoned unionists. Well-known leaders of Solidarnose -Wladyslaw Frasyniuk and Piotr Bednarz of Wroclaw, Andrzej Slowik and Jerzy Kropiwnicki of Lodz, Patrycjusz Kosmowski of Bielsko Biala as well as the socialist militant Edmund Baluka - won important concessions in Barczewo prison after a hunger strike in autumn 1983. the struggle for the rights of political prisoners and two other leaders of the Confederation for an Independent Poland (KPN). On December 7, they were attacked by the prison guards. Frasyniuk was found guilty of having "insulted' the assistant governor, which he allegedly did while he was being beaten.
been condemned for fulfilling their duty to Solidarnosc and to society. Prisoners hunger strikes are often the only means of struggle they can use to defend themselves against the bad treatment meted out by the regime, and to preserve their dignity.
This form of struggle severely harms the health of the prisoners. Society will need the health and strength of our comrades again. The fate of the prisoners rests in large measure on those of us who remain outside the prison walls, and our activity. It is up to us to create a situation in which they will no longer have to have recourse to hunger strikes.
"The RKS asks all the union organisations, all members of Solidarnose to demand freedom for the political prisoners and to testify to their conditions. This can be done in any way they choose, by individual or collective appeals to the * Diet or the Council of State, protest letters to prison governors, letters to the prisoners, material help to them and their families.'
It is the duty of the international workers movement to respond to this appeal, by protesting vigorously against the increase of repression in Poland through which the military-bureaucratic dictatorship hopes to crush Solidarnose's will to resist.
Send letters, telegrams and resolutions demanding the status of political prisoners and an unconditional and general amnesty for the imprisoned Solidarnosc militants to the president of the Diet (Marszalek Sejmu PRL, Warszawa, Poland) and to the Council of State (Przewodniczacy Rady Panstwa PRL, Warszawa, Poland).
Support for the prisoners, in the form of letters, telegrams or resolutions, should be sent to Wladyslaw Frasyniuk or Andrzej Slowik, Zaklad Karny, Barczewo, Poland.
INTERNATIONAL VIEWPOINT
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POLAND MIJ zwiazkon !!! zawodowych 'And now, we're going to discuss the future of trade unions.' (DR)