Ministry Ransacked In Warsaw Riots

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31627, 13 March 1968, Page 15

Ministry Ransacked In Warsaw Riots

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright)

WARSAW, March 12.

The debris of rioting littered the streets of Warsaw today after more fierce clashes between Polish militia and student demonstrators.

In the third of a series of disorders in the last four days, the student demonstrators ransacked a Ministry of Culture building in central Warsaw last night, smashing the windows and wielding broken furniture as weapons in their battle with militiamen.

Earlier, the militiamen had been jeered with shouts of “Gestapo,” “Freedom” and “Democracy” as they clashed, truncheons falling, with 10,000 demonstrators outside Warsaw University. The Polish news agency, P.A.P., says the militia detained about 300 persons during yesterday’s disturbances and, it claims, an initial identity check revealed that only about 30 of the detainees were students. The remainder were what the agency describes as “hooligan elements, persons without steady employment, and numerous arrivals from localities in the vicinity of Warsaw.” It says 27 militiamen, eight volunteer auxiliaries and about 15 social activists were injured or wounded during the clashes. The agency says the “adventurers” overturned a car, broke benches in a city square, damaged a militia radio car, seriously injuring the driver, set fire to a militia box at a railway station, attacked groups of militia volunteers and demolished the Kultura Cinema. When calm was restored late last night, steel-helmeted security patrols stood guard on the fringes of the old town near the university. Stones, wood and broken glass littered the roads where the demonstrators had passed. While the students are protesting at the discipline imposed on them by the authorities, and at the action taken against some of the demonstrators, the official Polish press blames the ferment in the capital on “hot headed trouble-makers and politicallyinterested people not connected with the university.”

Workers at the Zeran car factory on the outskirts of Warsaw staged a counterdemonstration last night, carrying banners reading “Away with the New Fifth Column” and “Clean the Party of Zionists,” and urging the students to return to their studies. As demonstrators and militia clashed outside the university yesterday, students and university staff held a meeting inside.

The students demanded that the university's disciplinary commission should change its rules, and called for the reinstatement of Henry Szlaifer, who is the son of one of Poland’s official censors and was expelled for participating in an earlier demonstration. They also demanded a list of the arrested students. Four students are reported to have been sentenced to prison for their part in the demonstration.