Word: gdansk
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Inside the Gdansk courtroom, the judge began trial proceedings last week with a few routine questions. He asked the defendant's profession (electromechanic); his salary ($85 a month); and if he had any decorations. He did, including the Nobel Prize for Peace, and he had once been the leader of the banned Solidarity trade union. The defendant, Lech Walesa, was in court to answer charges that he had slandered members of several regional electoral commissions. His alleged crime: issuing estimates of voter turnout in Poland's parliamentary balloting last October that were lower than government figures...
...rural areas, entire villages, in a swirl of colorful peasant costumes, dutifully trooped to local election halls behind brass bands. In the northwestern hamlet of Szczecinek, voting was temporarily disrupted when a woman gave birth to a healthy son beside the ballot box. In Walesa's hometown of Gdansk, 3,000 people marched through the streets carrying a banner that proclaimed WE WON'T GO TO THE POLLS, and in the steel-mill city of Nowa Huta, hundreds of youths clashed with plainclothes police. The head of Poland's Roman Catholic hierarchy, Jozef Cardinal Glemp, was conveniently in Rome...
Another plot was being investigated last week in Gdansk. The intended victim was Lech Walesa, 41, head of the banned Solidarity movement. Police were holding a paroled murderer who recently confessed that in 1983 he was asked by a mysterious man to murder the Solidarity leader. Said Walesa: "I am convinced that somebody is behind this...
...Polish flag last week became a heartbreaking symbol of the profound differences dividing the country. In the port city of Gdansk a few hundred people joined the official May Day parade and unfurled a long banner proclaiming SOLIDARITY IS FIGHTING. Suddenly flag-carrying onlookers, in reality plainclothes police, waded into the intruders, using the flagstaffs as clubs. They were quickly followed by ZOMO riot police and water cannons. Later in the day, other illegal demonstrations turned into full-blown street fights between young protesters and ZOMO; scores were injured...
...Gdansk raid came at a sensitive moment for the regime of General Wojciech , Jaruzelski. A week earlier, four Interior Ministry officials had been sentenced by a Toruan court to jail terms ranging from 14 to 25 years for their role in the abduction and murder last October of a pro-Solidarity Roman Catholic priest, Father Jerzy Popieluszko. The trial discredited the state security apparatus and suggested the possibility of a plot by Communist hard- liners against Jaruzelski's leadership. As a result, the authorities seemed more intent than ever on containing their opponents...