The first trial was in Radom, one of the centres of the working class opposition. Six workers received sentences ranging from to Sen years' imprisonment. following day, 20 July, seven more workers were sentenced to between three and five rears in prison for derailing a locomotive near the Ursus tractor plant in protest at the price increase.
Roch these trials were closed to the public and even to the workers" families. Evidently at least another 19 Poles in the Warsaw area are still to face trial. The number workers arrested and still awaiting trial in other areas is as yet unknown.
JACEK KURON launched against those who participated in the demonstrations and strikes. Since the demonstrations were spontaneous, the authorities and the police lost control of the situation and the repression is directed mainly against people who found themselves quite by chance in the areas where the incidents took place.' He explains that the workers arrested were kept incommunicado, unable even to see their families and unable to choose their own lawyers. Many were badly beaten up in jail during their interrogations And ne goes on: The workers, disorganised and deprived of information, are completely disarmed in the face of the repression. The reaction of the authorities is producing an atmosphere of hate and despair. The next explosion could become a tragedy for the Polish people.' The open letter ends by calling for a general amnesty: "Only a general amnest) for all the participants in the June demonstrations can bring the terror against the workers to an end. is punc opimon u countries where it is truly independent which can take up the struggle for this amnesty. I know that its voice has as much influence in Western Europe as it does with the rolsh authortles.
Following this letter, the italian Communist Party leadership has publicly expressed its disquiet about the trials in Poland; an international campaign for the release of the workers can undoubtedly influence the Polish Government. It is especially necessary that Communist Party demand that their leadership memocEs protest about the trials, as this could have a real effect in helping to force the Gierek regime to backtrack on the issue. Last week Robert Lanzini was sitting at home near the Imesa chemical plant in North Milan when he saw a white cloud floating into his garden. Going outside later he saw his cat lying on the ground. He picked up the animal and its tail fell off. This was just one small effect of the leakage of poisonous gas produced after an explosion at the chemical plant owned by the infamous multinational drug company, Hoffman La Roche. Other consequences range from scores of people suffering rashes and burns on the face, neck and arms to cabbages turning purple and decomposing.
These are the effects which are visible. What will happen in the future is anybody's great concern to a company which supplies 70 per cent of all NHS tranquilisers.
Such fortunes are not exceptional in the free enterprise drug market, where the law is the accumulation of profit, regardless of its effect. Many other companies — such as Distillers, who produced thalidomide - are in the same league. Of course they will all moan on about "accidents' when their money-making schemes produced deformed babies or poisonous gas, but such accidents are inevitable when technology is determined by the profits which can be made from it rather than the uses to which it can be put
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The leadership of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) has expressed concern over the sentencing of several Polish workers to jail terms of up to ten years following last month's strike movement against 60 per cent price increases. This comes after an appeal to the PCI by leading Polish dissident Jacek Kuron.
WEEKLY poisoners of Milan