Regime signals crack-down

Press, 6 September 1982, Page 8

Regime signals crack-down

NZPA Warsaw Seven civilians, including one man who later died, had suffered gunshot wounds in Wroclaw, south-west Poland, last week during riots that swept it and 54 other Polish towns, the news agency, Pap said yesterday. An investigation had shown that “in none of the mentioned cases police used arms directly against participants” in the Wroclaw riots, it said.

Around the country the riots, marking the second anniversary of the independ-' ent union, Solidarity, had left hundreds of civilians and police injured, more than 4000 people under arrest, and four people dead, according to official reports. Pap also reported that district courts in Poland had sentenced 70 people to prison terms ranging from several

months to years and-or fines of up to 40,000 Zloties (SNZ66S) in the wake of the unrest. As of Saturday magistrates courts had sentenced nearly 1000 others to fines or prison terms of one to three months, Pap said. Wroclaw was among the cities where the worst rioting occurred, and is south of Lubin, a copper-mining town where two people were shot and killed by the police. So far the Lubin deaths are the only ones officially attributed to police. The authorities began a crack-down on dissidents yesterday in their first political move after the riots. They announced that four leaders of the dissident group, K.0.R., would be charged with seeking to overthrow Communism in Poland by violence.