Polish prisoners win amnesty!
1984Nancy Gruber 1984-08Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 1 →
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The expected amnesty for 652 political prisoners, including the four leaders of the Workers' Defense Committee (KOR) whose trial had begun only the week before, was announced by the Polish government on July 21.
According to Eugenia Kempara, a member of Parliament who introduced the bill, this amnesty, the 12th since World War Il, is broader than any of the preceding ones. Its terms apply to all political charges except treason, espionage, and sabotage.
These charges do not appear in the indictments of the KOR leaders or the seven other Solidarity activists who have been in prison for two-and-a-half years, and it is expected that they will be released along with all the other prisoners within 30 days. The only Solidarity prisoners who may be exempted from the amnesty are Bogdan Lis and Piotr Mierzejewski, whose indictments include references to "high treason. "
The government has warned, however, that if any of those released are arrested and convicted again on similar charges within two years, their prosecutions can be reopened, and they may be subjected to harsher terms of detention. This condition has led Lech Walesa to predict that "If those freed are not permitted to operate in the organization they want to have, the jails will be full again within a month. "
General Jaruzelski proclaimed that the amnesty was motivated solely by humanitarian concerns. The Reagan administration, on the other hand, credited the amnesty to the pressure of the economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. government.
Ten million boycott elections Neither government has acknowledged what may be the most important factor in the granting of the amnesty: the growing resistance of the Polish people themselves—a resistance most recently expressed in the June 17 elections. According to Solidarity, which conducted a thorough and systematic on-site observation of the elections, more than 10 million people boycotted the elections.
Abstentions ran at 40 percent, rising to 50 percent in several large cities. The government had admitted to 25 percent abstentionism. When one takes into consideration the bludgeoning by the media used to "persuade" the people to vote and the reprisals threatened for non-participation, an even clearer picture of the strength of the resistance to the Jaruzelski dictatorship emerges.
How the amnesty affects the four KOR leaders in actuality remains to be seen. Adam Michnik, in a series of letters smuggled out of prison, has hinted that he would refuse an amnesty and would force his jailers to evict him. Both he and Jacek Kuron have insisted upon an opportunity to prove their innocence.
The four KOR activists, Kuron, Michnik, Zbigniew Romaszewski, and Henryk Wujec, have been accused of plotting to overthrow the Polish government by force. Solidarity leaders had described their trial as the most important since World War II. Lech Walesa has referred to it as a trial of Solidarity itself.