“We are millions, and we want changes”

On August 26 the Solidarity Express project was launched in Krakow.

Large-scale events continue in Poland as a part of celebration of the 20th anniversary of holding the first free election in Poland.

On August 26 the Solidarity Express project started in Krakow, Poland. Activists of NGOs, young politicians, students and journalists of European countries, the US, South America, Iran and China have taken part in the project. Among Belarusian participants invited to take part in the program of the Solidarity Express were www.charter97.org website journalists.

“In the framework of the Solidarity Express project we wanted to show people from around the world the path the Poles have gone to become free. Liberation of Europe started from our nation’s victory over Communism. And we are sure that the memories of those events and our experience could become a helpful lesson to many. And primarily for Belarus, where the human rights situation is difficult. We hope that Belarusians will find their way to freedom as well,” Karolina Potocka, a representative of the European Centre of Solidarity which had organized the event, said in an interview to the www.charter97.org website.

This year’s 20th anniversary year of the first democratic election which was followed by downfall of the Communistic regime in Poland, has coincided with one more date, the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, so the route of the Solidarity Express passed Krakow, Warsaw and Gdansk, the places related to these historic events.

Participants of the Solidarity Express visited the former Nazi German concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Warsaw Uprising museum, Solidarity Trade Union museum – “Roads to Freedom”, a famous Gdansk shipyard, and met with a legendary trade union leader Lech Walesa, Speaker of the Polish Senate Bogdan Borusiewicz, a Member of the European Parliament Roza Thun, a director of Communism Museum, a writer and artist who published underground literature in the 1980ies, an author of the well-known poster “Solidarity Cardiogram” Czeslaw Bielecki and other activists of the Resistance movement.

Speaking to participants of the Solidarity Express, Lech Walesa told under what conditions the workers’ movement in Poland, about repressions of the Communistic regime against activists of the Solidarity, but noted that only courage, faith and self-sacrifice of people who was fighting for freedom and independence of Poland, have brought about holding free elections in Poland and the Solidarity’s victory in 1989.

“No matter how the authorities tried to persuade us that we are few and isolated, but despite of that we knew that we are millions and we want changes. This belief helped us through all the years of struggle. And ultimately we won. Our generation was struggling for a possibility of changes, for a possibility of development. Now the time is for you young people to act. I willingly convey you a right to fulfill my mission,” the former president of Poland stated.

Lech Walesa had a special meeting with www.charter97.org website journalists. An exclusive interview with the leader of the Solidarity to our website is coming.