A day in the life of ...

Press, 12 April 1983, Page 20

A day in the life of ...

From “The Economist,” London

In camps scattered all over Poland some unlikely-looking conscripts have been getting up every morning since last November to face yet another day of roll-calls, drills, field exercises and hard labour.

They work from dawn till dusk. Conditions are rough. The men live in summer tents that are cold and damp, or they are crammed, in groups of 40, in converted railway freight cars in temperatures which in winter can fall to -30 C. They have to trek several miles to the bathhouse once a week.

These new recruits are kept separate from regular army conscripts and do not know when their

period of conscription will end. They are no ordinary conscripts. Many of them were previously registered as medically unfit for military service, so a new “F” classification was invented for people “able to live on an army base.” However, they are not being trained to fight They were conscripted after the suspension of martial law last December had made it more difficult to imprison Solidarity supporters. Fearing a mass response to the underground Solidarity movement’s call for a general strike on November 10, last year, the Polish authorities began drafting potential strikers into the army.

Some estimates put the number of these special camps at 22, and reckon that as many as 8000 special conscripts may be incarcerated in them.

These figures, and an account of life in the camps, were released last month in Brussels by Mr Jerzy Milewski, who runs Solidarity’s international office. They are based on eye-witness accounts, letters smuggled out of the camps and reports in underground bulletins.

Mr Milewski has also submitted a 600-page document on humanrights violations in Poland to the Madrid conference on European security.