JACEK CZAPUTOWICZ HAS BEEN a leader in the Freedom and Peace (WiP) movement in Warsaw since its beginnings in 1985. Prior to that he was involved in the independent student movement associated with Solidarity and spent time in prison during Poland's martial law period. In February 1986 Czaputowicz and another WiP leader were arrested and charged with "founding and directing an illegal association" and "cooperating with representatives of foreign organizations and intending to harm Poland's interests." Czaputowicz was released seven months later. Three weeks after the East-West conference in May, he was fined the equivalent of two-and-a-half months' wage for his role in organizing the event.
Czaputowicz's wife, Magdalena Sadowska-Czaputowicz, is also active in Freedom and Peace, and the Warsaw apartment they share with their three daughters is the hub of WiP activity. Czaputowicz was interviewed there by Polly Duncan, associate director of Sojourners Peace Ministry. --The Editors
Sojourners: Would you discuss the origins of Freedom and Peace (WiP) and give a brief history of the movement?
Jacek Czaputowicz: It started about two-and-a-half years ago when Marek Adamkiewicz was arrested for refusing military service. A group of his colleagues who belonged to the independent students' movement in the early period of Solidarity took up his defense. We organized a week-long hunger strike in Podkowa Lesna, outside of Warsaw, in order to try to free him.
A month later, in April 1985, a group from Cracow made public a declaration of the Freedom and Peace movement. During the next several months, groups in other cities came out in support of this declaration.
About 30 members of WiP returned their military registration cards that fall. Other people following in Adamkiewicz's footsteps were sentenced either for refusing to swear allegiance or refusing military service. We had three demands: provision for alternative service, a change in the military oath of allegiance, and the release of all people sentenced or arrested for refusing military service.
The military oath has a point in it about swearing allegiance to the alliance with the Soviet army and therefore is unacceptable to some people. Those who have refused military service think that the Soviet army doesn't always act in the interest of peace. They give as examples the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. After the September amnesty last year, all these protesters were released from prison and provision for alternative service was in some sense realized.
The Freedom and Peace movement also stresses ecology. This was very evident after the Chernobyl disaster when two demonstrations took place, one in Cracow and one in Wroclaw. Since that time several dozen demonstrations organized by WiP have taken place.
One of these ecology demonstrations forced the authorities to shut down a mill near Wroclaw. This chromium mill, which was more than 100 years old, was poisoning the drinking water of several hundred thousand people. The authorities wanted to rebuild the mill, but we were in favor of shutting it down completely. The authorities eventually made a decision which was what we had proposed.
Another aspect of Freedom and Peace is bringing people up in the spirit of peace, opposing emotions of nationalism in the population. One example of this is our work in encouraging respect for an Austrian soldier named Otto Schimek (see page 21). Another example was the demonstration last year on the 40th anniversary of the pogrom in Kielce. On July 4, 1946, several dozen Jews were murdered by the Polish population in Kielce. This act was an atrocity, especially as it came so soon after a war in which millions of Jews were killed. To commemorate this act, colleagues from WiP went to the building in which this pogrom started and wrote on it, "We will remember."
How did Freedom and Peace build upon the existence of Solidarity, and in what ways, if any, are the two movements connected?
For the most part, members of Freedom and Peace didn't belong to Solidarity. Some of them were students during the 1980-81 period in which Solidarity was a legal organization, and students couldn't belong to Solidarity. They formed the independent students' union which was in some ways comparable to Solidarity, but this existed only in the schools. The bulk of Freedom and Peace members are in their early 20s, people who didn't belong to Solidarity because they were simply too young at the time.
The Freedom and Peace movement takes up issues that are somewhat different from those addressed by Solidarity. The question of military service was not one that Solidarity chose to discuss; issues of peace and disarmament seemed too distant, too removed; and the issue of ecology, unimportant. And all these are issues with which Freedom and Peace is concerned. For this reason there's no competition between Solidarity and Freedom and Peace, because our issues are separate.
What do Solidarity leaders think of WiP and of the conference that just took place?
I think they have a very good opinion about WiP and about the conference. I spoke with Lech Walesa over the phone, and he was very taken with the idea. He didn't come to Warsaw because he thought that his presence was not necessary and in order to give this happening an identity of its own.
Why do you feel it was important to have the conference, and what do you think it accomplished?
The most important thing was that we were able to acquaint ourselves, not just us but all of Polish society, with Western peace movements. We need something that will help renew Polish political thought, and we see a source of this in the peace movements in the West.
Under martial law, when Solidarity was underground and having its own problems, there was no contact with the West. Western peace movements were considered instruments of Moscow's politics. Of course this wasn't true, but it took a long time to defeat this myth which is deeply rooted in Polish society. I think that the conference did a lot to overcome this myth and introduce the peace movement to Polish political actors.
With the situation of Soviet domination in Poland, there is obviously a lot of fervent anti-communism and anti-Sovietism here. And that seems often to translate into fervent support for the Reagan administration and its policies among the Polish people. Given those factors, how receptive do you think the Polish people are, or could be, to some of the ideas in the Western peace movement, for instance, bilateral disarmament?
First, I agree with the opinion that Polish society is more pro-Reagan than American society. When WiP made a statement opposing Reagan's policies in Nicaragua, there was quite a storm. Here, regardless of the issue, Reagan's policies have had 100 percent support until recently.
The anti-Sovietism you spoke of is certainly present in our society. This makes it difficult to understand Gorbachev's policies, and his actions are received here with a great deal of skepticism. But our intent in Freedom and Peace is that Polish society not vest its hopes in any one person, or in one American president.
Given these attitudes in Poland, has WiP spoken out in concrete support of certain peace or disarmament issues, for instance, when the Soviet Union decided to extend the moratorium on nuclear weapons testing?
WiP didn't issue any statement then, but that was because of other circumstances. We were occupied almost entirely with very concrete, immediate issues. But we recently issued our first statement on disarmament. We presented our views in a letter to Gorbachev.
We think that disarmament will come about, and obviously we support this. But within Polish society, there exists a certain unease that this will simply be a technical reduction of arms without any major political changes. In our letter to Gorbachev, we said this and proposed further steps.
The first concrete step was the withdrawal of all foreign military forces to their own territories, including Soviet forces from Poland and other countries as well as American forces. Then we proposed dissolving the major military alliances, NATO and the Warsaw Pact. And finally, we proposed the unification, or the creation, of an autonomous Europe. I should mention that the delegation carrying this letter didn't succeed in delivering it and was detained for 48 hours.
You mentioned the concern that there may be only technical solutions offered for these problems without any political ones. Could you and issues of freedom, democracy, and human rights?
For us the connection between these issues is indissoluble, inseparable. This is evident in our name. We consider this union of peace with freedom to be our contribution to the peace movement. We said during the conference that the major threat is not simply nuclear weapons but also the lack of freedom for the individual. The willingness, or readiness, to obey every given order including criminal ones is present in our society. We have examples of people being forced to swear allegiance against their conscience. First you swear allegiance against your conscience, and next you obey any order--perhaps an order to shoot workers or to launch a nuclear weapon.
From this point of view, Otto Schimek deserves special attention as someone who refused an order. For us this linkage of the problem of peace to the problem of freedom, democracy, and human rights is obvious.
At the beginning of our hunger strike, we expressed our understanding of peace: a person must attain internal peace, peace in the family, peace in the society or nation; only on that basis can international peace be built. That's an approach of our movement that is religious in nature. This is significant in our movement, and it arises from the church's social teaching.
What role does nonviolence play in the WiP movement?
AH of our public actions are in accord with the ideas of nonviolence. Hunger strikes, picketing, petitions, marches, and sit-ins all come from the catalog of nonviolent behavior. Returning military registration cards is based on the principles of civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is something very new in Poland. Until recently, demonstrations were oriented toward gathering people together, shouting a little, but basically it was understood that everyone would run away in the end. If people were arrested, it was a coincidental thing--from their own clumsiness.
In our actions the chance of being arrested is 100 percent. This brings us into conflict with the form of protest in Poland up to this time. From the time of martial law up to the time we began, all opposition activity was underground. People acted under pseudonyms; acuteness in evading the security police was highly valued. Our actions are oriented around another principle. You cannot have a hunger strike anonymously; you can't return your military registration card through a pseudonym.
After the announcing of the amnesty last year, this approach of public protest helped us very much. The amnesty created for us a whole new area of action. We'd always acted openly, and we didn't have to change our tactics. For Solidarity, though, creating new forms of opposition activity was a major problem and remains a major problem to this day.
You were recently released from prison for Freedom and Peace activities this year?
Because of the September 1986 amnesty, I was recently released from prison after seven months' incarceration. Together with Piotr Niemczyk, I was accused of leadership activity in an illegal organization. And we were threatened with a sentence of two to 10 years in prison.
What have other WiP activists, including yourself, suffered in terms of detention, arrests, fines, and things of this nature?
Since the amnesty we have been fined about five million zlotys by the sentencing boards. This is a pretty large amount in Poland. The average wage is about 20,000 zlotys a month. These fines constitute more than half of the total amount of fines imposed on all opposition activists in this period, including Solidarity and other activists. This indicates the degree of activism displayed on the part of WiP.
We've been arrested hundreds of times but, happily, for only short periods, usually for two days at a time. For example, one of our activists who wanted to attend this conference was arrested and detained May 6. This would not be unusual except this was already her third detention of the month.
Do you expect more arrests as a result of the success of the conference?
I don't think so. I think pressure from Moscow against arrests is influencing current government policy. This is the most important political factor in Poland right now. Moscow very much wants to have these arms control talks and is therefore interested in eliminating anything that would stand in the way. This presents for us a certain opportunity.
Did the Polish government have an official position on this conference?
Their standpoint is that the conference is essentially a provocation on an international scale intended to compromise the peaceful results of the Pope's third visit to Poland. This is from the government's message to the Polish episcopate, which was delivered because the conference was held in a church. But the real concern for the authorities is that we threaten their monopoly on peace--on international contacts and peace talks.
What do you think of the notion of "detente from below," and do you have real hope that it will positively influence U.S.-Soviet relations and the breaking down of the bloc system?
This is exactly what we're talking about. Detente cannot be an issue exclusively between governments. Breaking this monopoly is our goal. One can only ensure that peace exists when societies can contact one another. The major goal of the Eastern peace movement at this point is to pressure the governments of the East into allowing some contacts between societies.
In general, people from the East were simply refused permission to come here for the conference. This also happened to some people from the West. The fact that the conference was a relative success is not due to any change in the authorities' stance. The fact that all these people were able to come here is in part the result of coincidence and luck.
The church has been very important in Solidarity, more so than in other independent movements in the East. Could you comment on the role of the church in WiP? Are Christian people very involved in WiP?
Catholics are active in WiP, but it's not a church movement. The role of the church in Poland is different than in other countries. The church forms a sort of umbrella under which all sorts of independent activities can take place. This was very clear during our conference.Thus the role of the Catholic Church in this country is not comparable with its role in other countries.
Does WiP make an effort to communicate and work with other independent movements in Eastern Europe?
Yes. The East German group sent a document that was accepted by the conference. And in answer to the letter from members of the Moscow Trust Group [ who were unable to attend ], we sent a protest letter to Soviet authorities. We protest in this manner for the freeing of people held prisoner in other nations--most recently for a Hungarian and a Czech. We also signed a joint document on the situation in Chile and on the anniversary of the Hungarian revolution. Whenever possible, we cooperate with other movements.
WiP has also addressed issues on North-South relations including oppressive conditions in Central and South America.
From our very nature, we must support every action that is striving for democracy.
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