News from Poland
Sir: Mr Booker's excursion into Poland in your issue of 9 January has just been brought to my attention. He seems to be on the point of accusing me of all sorts of nastiness but since he either didn't read what I wrote in the Observer on 3 January very carefully or doesn't know what he's talking about, it is hard to get worked up.
But this should be said for the sake of the Poles involved. Jacek Kuron and Adam Michnik were at first generally believed to have been beaten up. Later their Polish friends in West Europe, after talking to travellers arriving from Warsaw, discovered this not to be so. It isn't surprising that there should have been conflicting informa- tion at that time. It was difficult in the first days of martial law to find out what was go- ing on even if you lived in Poland, let alone London. There were other instances of even more unpleasant stories (for example, the death in detention of one of Walesa's key advisers) also turning out to be untrue.
It is now accepted by everyone I know who is studying Polish events carefully that the intellectuals are living in reasonable conditions while under detention. To point this out isn't to argue that the martial law authorities are gentle pussycats. It is to con- trast their condition with that of the detain- ed worker members of Solidarity about whose fate little is known and which is feared to be much worse.
Solidarity members now in the West suspect the martial law authorities hope this discrimination will split the union's leader- ship.
Mark Frankland
Observer, 8 St Andrews Hill, London EC4
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