Translated material
Lesser evil
General Jaruzelski apologized to the Poles and defends his innocence
Yesterday, the District Court in Warsaw continued the trial of the initiators of the introduction of martial law on December 13, 1981. The main accused, 85-year-old General Wojciech Jaruzelski (pictured) , who is charged with “leading a criminal alliance,” began to testify . The illness of another accused, 82-year-old former head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Czeslav Kischak, did not become a reason to postpone the trial.The former leader of socialist Poland and the ruling Polish United Workers' Party dismissed the accusations, emphasizing that the introduction of martial law was caused by the highest necessity: “I reiterate that martial law saved Poland from the approaching disaster. Martial law was an evil, but it was a lesser evil than what would have happened if it had not been imposed.” The general claims that his actions saved Poland from the appearance on its territory of armies of other Warsaw Pact countries led by the USSR, as was the case in Czechoslovakia in 1968. He noted that the majority of Poles still consider the introduction of martial law justified.
The defendant remembered the crimes committed by people from the state apparatus. We are talking about the tragedy of December 16, 1981 at the Wuek mine, where a couple of days after the introduction of martial law, nine miners were killed as a result of police suppression of protests. This also applies to the murder of Father Jerzy Popieluszko in October 1984 by secret service officers. (However, the priest became a victim after martial law was lifted on July 22, 1983.)
“Even though I learned about this years later, I take responsibility for it. But any crime cannot be attributed to the authorities,” Jaruzelski said. He emphasized that during martial law “the army never used weapons,” denying information about the death of about a hundred people during that period.
“I apologize. “I regret first of all the social cost of this very difficult decision and the cases in which individuals suffered,” the general said. According to him, in those years he “was close to the ideology of socialism, as well as to the growing awareness of the need to change the system while maintaining the territorial integrity of Poland.” The general is confident that the subsequent rise to power of the opposition trade union Solidarity became possible thanks to his “pragmatic” decisions, although Solidarity was by no means “a ten-million-strong squad of angels.”
The defendant reproached the Institute of National Remembrance (INR), which initiated the investigation, for seeking to reduce the charge to an ordinary crime, without taking into account the political situation in 1981, when “chaos” reigned in the country. The general called for relying on facts and promised to refer to many documents to prove his case. He warned against using the trial for "current political purposes."
Wojciech Jaruzelski quoted the current President of Poland, Lech Kaczynski, who expressed joy that he lived to bring charges against the people responsible for introducing martial law. “I, too, rejoice along with Mr. President, because I believe that the case will be objectively examined by an independent court,” the general said. He will continue to testify on October 6.