On 20 July, the Warsaw Regional Tribunal meted out sentences to seven barucipants in a workers demonsiration wnich naciaker prace on 25 June at a tractor factory in Ursus near Warsaw. This had been one of the largest of many demonstrations which took place in roland protestine acainst ne increase in rood orces Those condemned received up to three years imprisonment. conduct of the court violated the principle of open trials. Only the ramires orine cerencants were arowee to aureno me nearnos access was barred to foreign journalists and to the many intellectuals and students who tried to attend the hearing. WOrKErS were accused or tamine an activities'. The entire defence counsel was appointed by the Simultaneously another trial was taking place in Radom, and here also the defendants were participants in a mass demonstration. The defendants received up to ten years in jail. The press nas announcco inarturner miars wur be takine bace Its our aury to oppose ine noton that the workers protests against a socially unjust policy and authoritarian methods of government are acts of underlined that responsibmity for the violation or rights ouring the events in Ursus and other Polish cities lies with the authorities. They sapped. life out of the higher forms of workers democracy, revucco to nomie ine workers councis created in 1300 transformed the trade into dead, subjugated to the apparatus of the authorities. We consider that to avore suen aramaro events in me turure, tis inorspensabre to return to the workers the rights due to them and not to resort to being, an abandoned or scorned save all those who struggle for workers' rights.
acuve bart in nooncan being MOY vean baner, Laurent ocnwarz 'hooliganism'. And it must be forcefully yve dogress ourserves To workers' protest in Poland.
ano fictitious bodies SIANSLAW BAKANGZAK KACEK BOCHENSKI, wowon. writer Many relationship in which man is a humiliate We are aware that Polish public opinion cannot hear our voice through normal channels, but we are convinced that we express the teelings of the majority of Polish people. That is why we address ourselves, through the medium of your editorial board, to which are an integral part of the rights of man. We launch the following appeal: come to the ald or rons workers in prison. informatron rom ire prisons and court rooms indicates that the security forces used physical violence during the investigations. It is also universally known that workers suspected or parcipaning in ine demondismissed from work. en masse. threatens the very material existence of themselves and their We address ourselves to Jean-Paul Sartre, Andre Malraux, Pierre Emmanuel, Louis Aragon, Jean Marie Domenach, Claude weacuress. ourselves lo Gunther Grass, Heinrich Boll, Arthur Miller, Saul Bellow, Eugene Montal, Ignace Silone, Stephen Spender and Robert Conquest.
all those who struggle of workers throughout the world for the liberation of Demand the release of those who participated in the • Doer or the • vounger ceneration KAZIMIERZ BRANDYS writer; STEFAN KISIELEWSKI, writer and Catholic publicist; ANDRZEJ Cano DUDICIsT MISLAnD AMINICAl econo mist; JAN JOZEF LIPSKI, critic and literary historian; ADAM Executions In December of last year two Maoist peasants were hung despite many protests. These were the first official political execu tions in India for almost thirty years (I use the word 'official' as hundreds of other political prisoners have been 'shot while trying to escape').
Despite the terrorist policies of the Gandhi regime, there is still some resistanc and an underground is developing in some cities. Numerous strikes have taken place, although most of them have met with severe repression. Unfortunately the left is very divided and heavily influenced by the class collaborationist policies of Stalinism, but more and more peopie are oecoming disillusioned with the centrist Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Maoist
ALL THE HYSTERIA whipped up over the last couple of weeks against the violence of the anti-imperialist struggle has tended to obscure the very real institutional violence being meted out day in day out to Republican prisoners Six Counties' jails.
In Her Majesty's prison on Crumlin Road in Belfast, for example, the cells are infested with mice and cockroaches. The total lack of hygiene in the prison has also led to prisoners becoming diseased and just the other week there was a serious outbreak of JOHN MAGEE reports from Belfast scabies in A Wing [the remand block]. The food provided for the prisoners is disgusting, and depend almost entirely sent in by relatives and friends. What food is eatable invariably arrives cold. In all the prisons, those held are tne subjected to a continuous barrage of physical and verbal abuse from the 'screws'. At visiting time the prisoners are onen sudecleo to sino seareness refusal to cooperate leads to loss of visits. The strip search particularly embarrassing in an atmost of them parcels tempt to remove dignity.
Gainst the prison regulations.
IS made prisoners' In the former internment camp of Magilligan, the Provisional prisoners recently took retaliatory action agIn statement issued by the Battalion Commander, Republican POWs, they described their protest: 'A prison warday UP AND OVEM. THE SCENE DURINE THE PREVIOUS JETTISONING OF der was taken into our custody and invited to strip off his uniform in the identical manner that he [the screw] would strip a Republican. When the are search was completed the prisoners asked the screw to sign a statement saying that 1 have been subjected to no ill-treatment whatsoever', and 'no violence or duress has been used agRED WEEKLY 9 September 1976 11 ainst me to induce me to sign this statement. The statement was signed by a prison officer, D. McClean.
Similar action was also taken by prisoners elsewhere against the Board of Visitors- gentlemen expert at turn ing a blind eye to the ill-treatment of prisoners.
In Crumlin Road there are abso lutely no recreational facilities made available to prisoners. The vindictive. ness of the prison authorities can be illustrated by the fact that although there are goal posts built in the prison vard. the prisoners have been.con sistently denied a football. Not that they would have much opportunity to use it anyway. Prisoners are allowed out for exercise for only 1½ hours per divided WINTE half hour periods; for the remainder they are locked up in their cells Such treatment, however, is not solely due to the warped mentality of prison staff. It is linked to the present campaign by the British Government to remove political status from Republican prisoners. The authorities trying hard to break morale through the use of these tactics and thus prevent any repetition of the prison protests of 1974 when Long Kesh internment camp was razed to the ground.
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Polish trials is opposed to