Word: gdansk
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...from mobile water cannons and, in the southwestern town of Lubin, a lash of bullets that left at least two workers dead and twelve wounded. Another demonstrator died of bullet wounds in the nearby city of Wroclaw, while a 22-year-old man was found dead following disturbances in Gdansk. They were Poland's first fatalities in political demonstrations since Dec. 16, when nine striking miners were shot by security forces at the Wujek colliery after the imposition of martial law. In the wake of the rioting, the government announced a major crackdown on all sources of dissent...
...government campaign seemed at first to have succeeded: an eerie calm settled over most of Poland's cities on the morning of the demonstrations. By midafternoon, however, groups of protesters had begun to gather. In Gdansk, the Baltic seaport where Solidarity was born two years ago, 4,000 employees filed out of the Lenin shipyard to lay flowers on a towering, triple-spired memorial to workers killed in the 1970 riots. Police and soldiers ringed the monument to prevent other demonstrators from joining the workers. Suddenly, the paramilitary police force, known as ZOMO, rolled toward the monument in three...
...could be a new spiral of violence that might ultimately prompt Soviet-bloc intervention. But if the regime succeeds in scaring people off the streets, its next move could be the formal banning of Solidarity. Either way, the prospects of reviving the dream of freedom that was born in Gdansk two years ago seemed dimmer than ever...
There have been signs that some fac tions in Solidarity have reluctantly begun to take to heart the government's tough talk. A bulletin issued this month by the leadership of an underground Solidarity chapter at the Lenin shipyard at Gdansk called for calm and restraint so that the government would have time to honor its commitment to continue reform. Economic hardships have clearly blunted the enthusiasm of many supporters for a confrontation with the regime...
...case that message might be lost in any upsurge of nostalgia on the second anniversary of the birth of Solidarity, security police turned Gdansk into an armed camp and quickly dispersed a crowd of 200 young demonstrators. In Warsaw, several hundred Poles braved water cannons to add flowers, greenery and pictures of Walesa and Pope John Paul II to the now famous cross laid out in Victory Square to honor the late Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski. But late last week authorities sealed off the square with a sturdy 6-ft.-high gray wooden fence. Still, as one veteran Western diplomat...