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The Polish Worker's Defence Committee (KOR) was founded in September 1976 following the sacking and jailing of workers who struck and protested against food price rises in June of that year. The price increases were estimated to be in the region of 70% by the Morning Star. Since then the KOR has been the target of continued government harassment.
This campaign has been stepped up in recent weeks. Firstly Stanislaw Pyjas, a student member of the KOR was found dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs in Krakow. The official explanation that he had fallen to his death while drunk was rejected by his fellow students who took to the streets during the crucial "Juvenalia' student festival, demonstrating against his murder.
Following this, three other members of the KOR - Jan Jozef Lipski, Adam Michnit, and Jacek Kuron - were arrested on the way to his funeral. Five other supporters of the committee were then also arrested, while a further two fell victim to a "road accident". The arrested oppositionists face charges of "colusion with a foreign organisation".
These measures have been greeted with a wave of protest, including a week long hunger strike by 14 dissidents in St. Martin's church in Warsaw, and a storm of protests,
demonstrations and solidarity hunger strikes throughout Europe.
In the face of these protests the Polish press and radio have mounted a counter campaign, supporting the official explanation of Pyias death, and attacking the defence committee. The Warsaw daily Zycie Warszawy has been in the forefront of this with the publication last week of 20 letters on the recent events. The letters - signed but carrying no addresses - call for the arrest of all members and supporters of the KOR and attack the church for permitting the "use of the House of God for anti-state excesses". In order to prevent any scepties from assuming that these letters were forged Zycie Warszawy also printed the text of a letter which calimed that Pyjas murder was at the hands of "pad thugs, aided by the police". This letter was described as "the ravings of a mad man" by the editors.
The attempt to crush popular support for the KOR seems doomed to failure. The oppositionists themselves have no intention of being silenced. In a letter from prison entitled / will go on shouting, printed in the Hamburg weekly Der Spiegel, Adam Michnit insists that the campaign of opposition will go on until the attainment of "National sovereignty, Socialist democracy and constitutional legality". Michnit continues: "We must fight for these ceaselessly, even if
MATT MONTGOMER Y
we put our personal freedom and safety at risk by doing so".
At present the strength of the opposition is impossible to measure. However, Jacek Kuron, interviewed by the French Trotskyist daily Rouge gives some indication: "We have so far distributed nearly three million zlotys (about 3,000 months average wage). The greater part of this money came tens of thousands of different people. There are petitions with nearly 3,000 signatures including the letter from 1,100 Ursus wo.kers demanding the reinstatement of those who have been sacked".
The dilemma facing the Polish bureaucracy is a serious one. It can only attempt to defeat the opposition by repression, yet by doing so it not only strengthens their resolve but, as the death of Pyjas showed, also strengthens the oppositions support among the population as a whole. Yet it cannot afford to ignore the opposition or try to grant them a few concessions for unlike the disturbances of the past, this opposition is politically consolidated and organised. In addition to the KOR the Krakow students announced their intention to form their own organisation, in opposition to the official students union. To allow these elements of self organisation to develop would be to court disaster and this the bureaucracy is aware of.
G. LATO