Polish plight ‘familiar’

Press, 19 December 1981, Page 1

Polish plight ‘familiar’

PA Wellington Poland’s military authorities had a heavy responsibility to act with the utmost restraint and to restore normal political life without delay, said the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) yesterday. “I hope they can do it without interference or intervention from Poland’s neighbours,” he said, in a statement after receiving a visit from the Polish Association in New Zealand. “As the situation in Poland has become clearer, it remains, a cause of consider-, able concern to New Zealand,” Mr Muldoon said. “It is difficult to see how soldiers and police can find lasting answers to Poland’s political problems or get the economy working again.”

Mr Muldoon said New Zealand would watch the actions of the military authorities carefully. He also said it appeared that each generation of New Zealanders would see the repression “which is an essential part of the domination of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union.” “In the 1950 s the freedom

movement in Hungary was ruthlessly crushed. Then it was Czechoslovakia’s turn, and now Poland. There is a lesson there for all of us, particularly our younger people and those whose memories are short.”

The Cabinet will next week consider a request by Poles resident in New Zealand to “send the Polish Embassy back to Poland.” The request was put by Mr Zezislaw Lepionka, president of the Polish Association in New Zealand, when he visited Mr Muldoon yesterday. New Zealand Poles were “outraged” at the Polish Government’s military actions against its own people this week, the association told Mr Muldoon in a letter.

Mr Lepionka said Mr Muldoon gave no indication of how the Cabinet would greet the request.

The association also asked the Government to direct its representative at the United Nations to press for the dispatch to Poland of a United Nations commission to investigate, monitor, and

report on the situation faced by the Polish people. That request would also be considered by the Cabinet, Mr Lepionka told journalists outside Mr Muldoon's office. He described Mr Muldoon’s response to his visit as very sympathetic. “He knows the situation quite well.” Mr Lepionka said his association has about 650 families as members, the majority of whom have relatives in Poland. Mr Lepionka’s father lives in western Poland. ' All communications, including those from amateur radio operators, had ceased from Poland, he said.

In a telegram to the Polish Embassy. Mr Lepionka’s association has demanded

the immediate resignation of the Polish Government. The military action against workers in Warsaw, Gdansk, Katowice, and elsewhere had betrayed agreements, the telegram said.

The letter to Mr Muldoon said that the New Zealand Government should make a strong protest to Poland. New Zealand should also determine whether it could continue to accept diplomatic representation of a regime “which has so callously betrayed its recent undertakings to the workers and people of Poland, and is now manifestly acting to suppress the just aspirations of the Polish nation.”

Strikers killed, page 8.