Demonstrations Poland

Solidarity founder Lech Walesa called on the outlawed trade union to organize independent May Day demonstrations across Poland to show the "aspirations and possibilities of the workers." The underground Solidarity branch in Warsaw issued a statement saying it would defy a ban by authorities and stage a protest on May 1--the international workers' day--against recent food price boosts. The government has announced food price increases ranging from 10% to 25%.

Near the end of a European tour dogged by massive protests against his military and environmental policies, President Bush met a far warmer welcome Friday in Poland, where memories of life under communism support deep pro-American sentiments. "We think it's thanks to the United States that we became members of NATO," said Grzegorz Lada, a coach who brought a small-town children's soccer team to try to see the presidential motorcade and ended up watching Bush greet the boys individually.

Workers at a Roman Catholic convent on the edge of the Auschwitz concentration camp punched, kicked and dragged out an American rabbi and six students who occupied the grounds Friday and demanded that the nuns leave. About 20 people, including uniformed and plainclothes police, watched as the workers ripped up the demonstrators' signs and assaulted them.

Former President Clinton was jeered by anti-globalization protesters and hit by an egg while visiting Warsaw during a European speaking tour. The egg struck Clinton's sleeve as he walked in Warsaw's Old Town. Police detained a 19-year-old man. "The president laughed at the matter, saying, 'It's good for young people to be angry about something,' " spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said. Clinton was not injured.

Dozens of youths shouted "Traitor!" at Solidarity leader Lech Walesa on Sunday over his agreement to start talks next month with Poland's Communist government. They shouted "Down with the traitor!" and "No talks with murderers!" as he addressed a rally in the northern city of Gdansk, witnesses said. Youths also shouted when Walesa said Solidarity should seize the chance to reform Poland at talks due to start on Feb. 6.

The Polish Communist Party took the first steps toward dissolving itself Saturday and to lay the groundwork for members to become "social democrats" in "a new Polish party of the left." But the old Polish United Workers Party--as the party is formally known--took up nine hours of its congress entangled in a legal debate over how to pass on its property holdings to its successor.

The Polish government scolded Solidarity leader Lech Walesa on Friday for his criticism of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki's reform program, saying "exposure of political differences does not serve the interests of the country." The remarks by government spokeswoman Malgorzata Niezabitowska came a day after Walesa attacked the government for failing to address the concerns of workers in the Gdansk shipyard, where the Solidarity union was born in 1980.

About 5,000 Poles staged an unauthorized rally here Sunday to commemorate the heroes of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising and marched along the route by which condemned Jews were taken for deportation to Nazi concentration camps. The marchers were mostly Poles who sympathize with the idea of remembering the World War II uprising, but they also included a broad cross section of dissident and opposition groups.

Strike action spread to a second major industrial plant in southeastern Poland on Friday, and negotiators appeared to be stalled in their efforts to bring a quick resolution to the most serious labor unrest here since martial law was declared in 1981.

Miroslawa Glowacka, a nurse who is angry about hospital reforms, says she wouldn't bother to journey to Warsaw to join protests if her grievances could be solved by administrators in her central Polish city of Lodz. But the only way to win better working conditions--and improve patient care--is to get the national government to revise its health reform policies, she says.

Polish farmers angry about competition from foreign grain imports have been blocking roads in protest, and they're threatening to escalate their actions in mid-September if their demands are not met. But the government of Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek, concerned about Poland's international obligations and a future bid for European Union membership, is vowing not to cave in.

More than 1,000 young Poles clashed with police after the funeral of a 13-year-old basketball fan killed by an officer. The mourners, many from cities across Poland, threw rocks at riot police who tried to stop them from marching to the spot where Przemek Czaja was killed with a nightstick after a basketball game Saturday in Slupsk, 250 miles north of Warsaw. Police detained at least 50 people before the crowd dispersed. Young Poles have rioted nightly since Czaja died.

To the anguish of widows and the outrage of Solidarity leaders, a court presiding over the largest trial to stem from the 1981 Communist crackdown in Poland acquitted 22 riot police Friday of killing nine protesting miners. Cries of "Shame, shame" went up in the courtroom in the southern industrial center of Katowice when Chief Justice Ewa Krukowska announced that evidence was inadequate to prove the defendants' guilt.

Workers from the failed Gdansk shipyard took to the streets Friday for the third day running, burning tires and shouting anti-government slogans, in a campaign to save their jobs. Nearly 1,500 protesters gathered outside the provincial governor's office in the Baltic port city. Workers blamed the government, dominated by ex-Communists, for failing to rescue the shipyard--cradle of the Solidarity trade union, which led the overthrow of the old regime in 1989.

Maria Wilk has lived through turbulent times in Poland over the last two decades, but the demonstration outside All Saints Roman Catholic Church here Wednesday was the first to draw her into the streets. "I had to come for my own conscience, and I had to come for the sake of my children," said the mother of four, kneeling on the cold pavement in prayer. "I've always considered the commandment 'Thou shall not kill' something that cannot be interpreted in any other way."

Poland's prime minister ordered a probe into a provincial governor's decision to let a far-right group stage a march at Auschwitz that outraged both Roman Catholics and Jews. Prime Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz said the governor of the province where the World War II concentration camp is located had been summoned to Warsaw to explain his decision.

Roman Catholic Cardinal Jozef Glemp of Poland met with a dozen American Jewish leaders and expressed regret over a 1989 sermon that many Jews regard as anti-Semitic. "I regret sincerely that this unfortunate situation occurred and recommit myself . . . to combatting anti-Semitism at its very roots," Glemp told the Jewish leaders in Washington.