Getting Tough

A new round of harassment

In the doublespeak jargon of Poland's military bosses, it was called Operation Calm. The two-day police sweep, as described in the government press last week, netted 145,000 curfew violators and other petty miscreants. Out of that group, 99,000 were "warned," 29,000 "lectured" and 7,000 fined on the spot. Some 3,900 people were hauled into police stations.

The stated purpose of the roundup was to test the effectiveness of the martial law rule, imposed on Dec. 13 by General Wojciech Jaruzelski. The result, admitted the national press agency PAP, was "not as good as it might be." More direct was the U.S. State Department, which branded Operation Calm "a mockery of all recent Polish government statements to the effect that life is beginning to return to normal in Poland."

In fact, Warsaw's claims of normality were buffeted on several fronts last week. In the western city of Poznan, site of the bloody "bread and freedom" riots of 1956, 194 protesters were reportedly jailed after marching through the streets bearing leaflets proclaiming DEATH TO THE REDS. In a Warsaw streetcar, a police sergeant was gravely wounded when an unidentified attacker shot him in the stomach and fled. In addition, a number of minor bombings were reported.

Meanwhile, church-state relations seemed to be deteriorating rapidly. TIME has learned that Polish authorities may be contemplating the arrest of several Roman Catholic priests. An article in the party daily Trybuna Ludu accused some priests of involvement "in provocative and offensive political activity." That criticism was echoed three days later in a Radio Warsaw broadcast that charged members of the Catholic clergy with acting "irresponsibly." Specifically, they were criticized for spreading messages and "gossip" during their pastoral visits with the estimated 4,000 Solidarity union members and sympathizers who have been held in detention camps since the Dec. 13 crackdown.

After one such visit, a clergyman last week reported Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa to be in "perfect" mental health and "full of enthusiasm." The priest, Henryk Jankowski of Gdansk, was allowed to meet with Walesa to arrange the baptism of his seventh child, Maria Victoria, born on Jan. 27. Walesa, who is reportedly being held in a government guest house near Warsaw, said that he expected to be freed in time for the March 7 christening ceremony. He also gave the priest a brief note saying that all previous appeals attributed to him had been "provocatively fabricated." Wrote Walesa: "My concept of struggle is different, and I will explain it after coming out." Despite his dreams of a prompt release, that explanation may be long in coming.

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