in association with

Speak Truth To Power (Courage without Borders) Series in KI Media

.....

Zbigniew Bujak (Poland) Political Participation and Life Underground

Biography

his arrest in 1986. Born in 1954 and trained as an electrical technician and soldier,
Bujak became active in the opposition in 1978 while he was working at the Ursus tractor factory. After organizing a strike in 1980, Bujak became the leader of the Warsaw (Mazowsze) region of Solidarity in 1981. Escaping capture in Gdansk on the night martial law was declared, Bujak traveled underground back to Warsaw where he set up one of the most elaborate and effective underground operations ever Solidarity for the Mazowsze region until 1989. He was one of Solidaritys leading negotiators in the "Round Table Negotiations," during which he and his colleagues

Zbigniew Bujak led the Solidarity underground in the Warsaw region from the imposition of martial law in 1981 until

known. After his release from prison in a general amnesty, Bujak continued to lead
negotiated a peaceful compromise with the communists and set the stage for the rise of democratic governance in Poland.

The wave of democracy that started in Poland inspired change in Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and eventually throughout the entire region. Bujak decided not to run for office in this electoral contest,
instead choosing, like

movement. He also worked in the political arena, and helped to found the Citizens
Movement-Democratic Alternative, later the Democratic Social Movement, and the Union of Labor. Elected to Parliament in 1991, he served until 1997. There he spoke eloquently on behalf of womens rights and against anti-Semitism, incurring the wrath of many who were once his ardent supporters. He served as

Lech Walesa, to stay focused on the trade union

Minister of Customs,
Interview

one of the most important posts in the Polish government until his retirement from politics in 2002.

In the Solidarity Movement, though we didnt realize the army would be used on such a scale, we knew there would be some sort of martial law introduced. We preparedhiding the money, all the machines, the fileswe hid it all. On December 12, 1981, on the very day when the Solidarity Trade Union held a national meeting at Gdansk shipyard, news was coming in that ZOMO, a special unit of military police used in street fighting, was mobilizing. We thought, "This is it. Even if there is very little we can do at this point, we just have to go. We have to finish the meeting of the national committee."

This particular meeting was being very closely monitored by the secret service. Entering the Gdansk shipyard and arresting us there could have been
dangerous because it was a big factory, with a lot of people around and it could have turned into a direct confrontationwith consequences. It was clear from the very beginning that General Jaruzelski was trying to avoid that. He used a tremendous

number of police and army units to intimidate us. He wanted to paralyze us with this massive force. Tactically speaking, he did it all very well. They decided to wait and

arrest us in our hotels, which was much easier to do. We could see the Monopol Hotel being surrounded, and people being taken away. When we got
there, the receptionist told us that Janusz Onyskiewicz, the Solidarity spokesperson, had been arrested. The moment had come.

Zbyszek Janus, another activist, and I went directly from the shipyard to the railway station. From there Zbyszek went to his friends in Gdansk, and I stayed that first night in a monastery; then, the next day, I moved to a private apartment. From the windows I could see the tanks, one after another, entering the shipyard. We managed to get in touch with the people of the strike committee inside to figure out whether we should join them, but they suggested that we should stay out, that all the leadership should scatter to different hiding places. I got an engineers uniform and rode the train back to Warsaw.
In Warsaw, the most important problem was figuring out who was in hiding, and how to get in touch with them. I had a very clear-cut strategy. I went to my friends family and asked them to ask their neighbors to go to a very trustworthy priest named

Father Nowak to ask for help in contacting others in the underground. Nowak already knew where my deputy, Wiktor Kulerski, was hiding in a private house. I met Kulerski the same day. Another priest from a

neighboring parish helped us out. Wiktor then got in touch with Ewa Kulik and Helena Luczywo, and now we knew that our problems had been solved. With those two women, we would be able to build the entire underground network.

We organized three separate structures. The editorial committees published and distributed underground newspapers and leafletsour most important function. A separate structure existed for all these people who organized Pularskis,
Januss, Zbigniew Tomaszewskis, and my activities. Every single one of us had to have a separate crew of people who organized safe houses for us where we could live, have meetings, and work. The others didnt know where we lived or which people were organizing for us. So if somebody got caught by the secret service, that

person would know as little as possiblejust one cell would be disrupted. Every month we had to change apartments and our appearance. The way the secret police did their surveillance was by
compiling details about the kind of hat, coat, bag you carried. If you switched what you wore, you could easily lose the police. At one point I
remember having this jacket that was very light on one side and very dark on the other, so I could turn it inside out and unbutton it and it would look like a coat.

In one place, where we were for a month, we had about sixteen different apartments at our disposal to move to at any time, apartments of complete strangers. We avoided both our own families and

those of other activists. We avoided our friends. That meant we had to completely put our trust in strangers. At the beginning we had this fear that these people would sell us out. The reward for doing that was huge: twenty thousand dollars and a permanent exit visa to leave the country. But only once was someone betrayed.

"Lets not get caught" was our slogan. The general belief in Poland was that the secret police were omnipotent. The whole system was based
on the myth of their "terrible efficiency." When people were shown that a year had passed and the opposition was still not captured, was flourishing underground, the myth of efficiency began to show cracks. This was our convictionthat remaining free would compromise the system. And we were right. Today we still get calls from former secret police agents who say, "You know, you son of a bitch, if we had caught you then..." and you can see they are still angry. There are

struggle (though this is certainly a paradox) does not require that much courage. I myself was in the army and know its easier to just point, shoot, and
run. When I read about the dissidents in Russia, I realized

two kinds of courage. I have a deep conviction that military "civilians

courage" is much harder. I dont know how to prove this, but when you have to make a decisionwhether to sign a petition, or whether to participate in a demonstrationwhen you know you can be put
into jail, sentenced, or sent to Siberia for years, the way that the Russians have been, can see that it requires a different courage to be ready for this type of activity. In politics, you can call it

this is real courage. When you read about Mandela in South Africa, you courage to express your true

opinions. It may turn out that you lose friendsthat somebody in the family turns
from you. I experienced it. I know I stopped being a hero to all Poles when I expressed my opinions aloud. A lot of people said, "You have disappointed us, you betrayed us. We thought you would be with us, the Nationalists, you would be leading us." And a lot of anti-Semites said, "We thought you would be a true Pole, and that we would deal with those Jews and Communists." Or all those people involved with the antiabortion movement, when I said I believed that its the womans decision to choose, turned me into enemy number one. Look, I believe all of my dreams are coming true. I was afraid that my wife and I would be childless. Then we had a son and we are happy beyond belief. If he hadnt been born I think I would have been a frustrated, bitter person, thinking Id wasted my family life for

I am leaving for my son is the best Poland I could possibly have helped create. You know what we are doing now is going to become the stuff of
something abstract. But he came. And I have this feeling that what legends, the same way as it was for us when we talked about our parents lives. I have

the sense of participating in a huge victory:

the end of

martial law, and later the roundtable, and then Tadeusz Mazowieckis success. Our idea has won, in the sense of helping fulfill a big political vision, and I was part of it. - Kerry Kennedy, Speak Truth To Power, 2000 President of Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights
* With my emphasis. - Theary C. Seng, CIVICUS Cambodia founding president ** Please contact us at CIVICUS Cambodia if your newspaper, website, Facebook etc. can carry this series.

The RFK Centers Speak Truth To Power (Courage Without Borders) project in Cambodia is funded by The Charitable Foundation (Australia). For more information, please visit: www.civicus-cam.org and www.rfkcenter.org/sttp.

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