2000 Polish students miss class

Press, 10 March 1984, Page 10

2000 Polish students miss class

NZPA-Reuter Garwolin More than 2000 students, backed by their parents and local church officials, protested against the removal of crucifixes from their high schools yesterday. Students from four schools in Garwolin, 60km south-east of Warsaw, boycotted classes and gathered at a Catholic church to hear their priest denounce riot police for dispersing a demonstration against the crucifix ban. Parents of the students at the School for Agricultural Studies, where a one-day occupation was held, negotiated into the night with Government officials sent from Warsaw to end the protests, local church officials said.

The parents were holding out against a Government demand that they agree to the removal of the crucifixes or risk seeing their children expelled, the officials said.

As the police withdrew

from positions surrounding two of the schools, the bishop of Siedlce, whose diocese includes Garwolin, summoned Church officials for emergency talks on the crisis.

Poland’s Catholic bishops have attacked the Communist authorities for banning crucifixes from high schools, hospitals and factories against what they say are the wishes of ordinary Poles, most of whom are practising believers. The Government says separation of Church and State in Poland means there is no place for religious symbols in public places. It says many Poles are nonbelievers or follow other faiths and that it will oppose moves to “clericalise the State.”

In a separate development, the official Pap news agency announced that Marek Nowakowski, a dissident author living in Warsaw, had been arrested.