Agaton Kozinski
Polska
It took three decades, but Poland has finally ruled that the imposition of martial law was a crime, said Agaton Kozinski. The generals who declared a “state of war” and sent tanks into the streets in 1981 have now been held accountable for perpetrating a national trauma. Overnight, communist Poland changed from a dynamic country, where Lech Walesa was leading the Solidarity union in strikes and calling for democracy, to a grim prison state. The borders were closed, phone lines were cut, mail was censored, and universities were shut. Thousands of activists were summarily jailed, and the rest of us were subject to a curfew.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Of course, last week’s verdict was largely symbolic. Only one of the four generals, former Interior Minister Czeslaw Kiszczak, was convicted, and his two-year sentence was suspended because of his advanced age, 86. His superior, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, and former Defense Minister Florian Siwicki were ruled too ill to stand trial, while Siwicki’s deputy, Gen. Tadeusz Tuczapski, died during the trial. But a symbol was all we needed. The argument Jaruzelski has always given, that his action saved the country from a Warsaw Pact invasion, has been decisively rejected. “Historical justice has been done.”
-
Nicola Sturgeon's memoir: making the personal politicalTalking Point Former Scottish first minister attempts to set record straight in 'Frankly' but does she leave more questions than answers?
-
Trump-Putin: would land swap deal end Ukraine war?Today's Big Question Ukraine ready to make 'painful but acceptable' territorial concessions – but it still might not be enough for Vladimir Putin
-
The truth about sunscreenThe Explainer The science behind influencer claims that sun cream is toxic
-
United Kingdom: No army can fight in the fog of lawfeature King Henry V may have been a hero to Shakespeare, but he’d be a war criminal in today’s Britain.
-
Turkey: Mass trial ends in mass convictions
feature Many Turkish lawmakers say the Ergenekon trial was nothing but an excuse for the prime minister to put away his rivals and silence his critics.
-
Germany: Is Amazon breaking labor laws?
feature Amazon is running what amounts to a labor camp right here in Germany.
-
France: Hollande’s zigzag presidency
feature Now that a law in favor of gay marriage is actually being drafted, we’re seeing the president’s will buckle.
-
Spain: Is Basque terrorism really history?
feature The Basque separatist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, or Basque Homeland and Freedom, announced last week that it was giving up violence.
-
Belarus: Where even clapping is illegal
feature It has dawned on Lukashenko that the clapping crowds that have begun appearing recently, seemingly expressing approval of his government, are actually “being sarcastic,” said Nicola Lombardozzi at La Repubblica.
-
France: The burka ban comes into force
feature Many Frenchmen doubt the National Assembly's law against the covering of the face while in public will be fully enforced.
-
Switzerland: We’re keeping our guns
feature The Swiss rejected a new gun-control law that would have forced them to turn in their army-issue guns for storage in public arsenals.