- Title: POLAND: Poland marks the 25th Anniversary of martial law.
- Date: 14th December 2006
- Summary: IMAGE OF 19 YEAR OLD STUDENT, GRZEGORZ PRZEMYK, FAMOUS VICTIM BEATEN TO DEATH DURING MARTIAL LAW
- Embargoed: 29th December 2006 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Poland
- Country: Poland
- Topics: History,Domestic Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA6IL8MXTVZB8GB424MCKOJNPAQ
- Story Text: Poles have marked the 25th anniversary of the introduction of martial law on Wednesday (December 13).
It was in December 1981 that General Jaruzelski's parliamentary police, backed by army units, stormed a firemen's officer-training academy in Warsaw. It ended an occupation by striking cadets. Eleven days later, on December 13, martial law was imposed and Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa was the most prominent of many of the union's members taken into custody.
Every year a demonstration and vigil is held outside Jaruzelski's residence.
Late on Tuesday (December 12) night, a few hundred people with banners and chants gathered to show their undiminished resentment for the one time general's actions.
The majority of Poles consider the one and a half year period of tyrannical rule driven by Cold War paranoia to have been completely illegal and a huge step backwards for a country that at the time was looking forward to a fully integrated and democratic future.
"The more I hear about martial law the more certain I become that it brought nothing but bad results," said one young man, who had come to protest and take part in a re-enactment of riot police actions.
Overnight, 1980's style re-enactments of military riot police rounding up fellow actors posing as innocent protesters were held in one of Warsaw's main squares, Plac Zamkowy.
Also in the square was a temporary memorial gallery, exhibiting photos of some of the people that lost their lives during the period.
On Wednesday, it was visited by Poland's prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, as well as those who remembered the events of the early 1980's.
"Well it was something that broke into our life very suddenly and very dramatically," said Jan Owsinski.
"And in fact it broke a process that many people thought would lead very, very early to what we have today. But rather than this it led to a disaster, both political, moral and economic as well. It was not only that, all of a sudden we didn't have telephones and people died because emergency services couldn't reach them. But they also of course died in the mines and the strikes. Simply, the state, in a way disappeared. It stopped to function for a long time. If you couldn't pass the border of a city in order to go to your relative or to do simple business it meant society had to function in a completely different way. As if during an occupation," he added.
His views are shared by many but not all. There is a significant minority of people, including some youngsters who have little if any memory of the period, who believe General Jaruzelski was a hero who saved Poland from the clutches of a western invasion, bent on crushing the soviet way of life. This is a view Jaruzelski has always maintained.
Violent clashed between riot police and Solidarity supporters were frequent during the clampdown. The government appeared to vacillate between allowing marches for specific occasions and prohibiting demonstrations which violated martial law regulations. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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