General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the former communist leader of Poland, is to stand trial for "communist crimes" 25 years after he tried to crush the Solidarity trade union, declared a "state of war" in Poland and jailed tens of thousands of people.
The 82-year-old former military officer, who headed the Polish communist party and served as defense minister, prime minister and president, has always argued that his decision to impose martial law on Poland in December 1981, 18 months after the rise of Solidarity sent tremors through the Soviet bloc, was the lesser of two evils -- aimed at preventing the greater despair that could have followed a Red Army invasion of Poland.
Prosecutors filed charges against Jaruzelski and several others on Friday, arguing that his crimes also violated Poland's communist constitution.
He could face 11 years in jail if found guilty. "We're expecting the trial to start quite soon," an official at the institute said. "It's a political issue, of course."
Poland is run by twin brothers, Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, one the president, the other leader of the governing party, and both conservative anti-communists jailed under martial law. They came to power last year determined to purge the Polish establishment of communist elements and have long campaigned for a process of "decommunisation" parallel to the de-nazification of Germany after the war.
Jaruzelski has apologized for declaring martial law, as well as for his role, as military chief, in the Soviet invasion of Czecho-slovakia in 1968. But he has always said he did what he thought was best at the time, only to learn later that his acts may have been "shameful."
The indictment filed on Friday charged Jaruzelski with being the head of an "organized criminal group of a military nature, which aimed to perpetrate crimes that consisted of the deprivation of freedom through internment" and violating "workers' rights."
Jaruzelski said yesterday that millions of Poles supported his decision to impose martial law. He denounced the move to put him on trial as a "moral court."
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the