Word: martial
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...like the five being presently indicted for voluntary manslaughter are, along with the almost 200,000 other defense contractors currently employed in Iraq, technically outside Iraqi jurisdiction until Jan. 1 of next year, should start to provide answers to these questions. Unfettered by the chain of command and court-martial and outside the reach of the nascent Iraqi government, these mercenaries, specifically commissioned to provide security instead of standard U.S. armed forces, went about for years almost totally free of accountability. It’s almost surprising that the 2007 shootings and the few ugly and baseless murders that preceded...
...Eventually we [Solidarity] won, not thanks to a bloody slaughter but to the Round Table negotiations," Kutz argues. "It was a great phenomenon." He also praises Jaruzelski's efforts to explain motives and circumstances behind the martial law. Having stepped down in 1990 after serving as president of Poland during the transition period, the general published books and gave numerous interviews about the clampdown, forcing Poles to rethink their recent history. "He is a man who bears his crown of thorns with unusual dignity and unusual strength," says Kutz...
...Opinion polls show public opinion in Poland divided on how Jaruzelski should be judged. A December 2007 survey showed that 44% of Poles believe that the communist authorities had no choice but to impose martial law, while 45% condemn the decision. Some former Solidarity leaders, such as current Speaker of the Senate Bogdan Borusewicz, are not as forgiving of Jaruzelski as others have been. "The trial is an act of justice," Borusewicz said. "The martial law was a classic Latin-style military putsch. Jaruzelski defended the communist system, not Poland. He defended the communist dictatorship, not the state...
...Another former opposition activist, Kazimierz Kutz, now a filmmaker and member of parliament also defends the general. "If not for the martial law," Kutz argues, "there would have been many more victims. Had Solidarity started to fight, the army would have had to use weapons and there would have been a massacre. Jaruzelski prevented a real civil war." Kutz was interned during the martial law and his pregnant wife suffered a miscarriage after having searched prisons to find her husband. Despite his personal tragedy, Kutz can still see merit in the crackdown, which, he says, stopped radicals and allowed moderates...
...because he "wanted the matter to be considered by an independent court at an open trial". Many prominent lawyers, however, doubt whether a definitive verdict can emerge from courts of law. With even Poland's court of public opinion divided on the case of General Jaruzelski's declaration of martial law, it will ultimately be left to history to judge his actions...