photo - PAPA small band of campaigners, under the banner 'Solidarity 2010', who had camped outside the Presidential Palace on 10 April, the anniversary of the Smolensk air disaster, have left the area in central Warsaw.
The group, which had shrunk to a handful by Monday morning, had declared that they would stay rooted to the spot until they were forcibly removed, or until all their demands were met, including the dismissal of Prime Minister Tusk as a “traitor” for pandering to Moscow over its investigation into the tragedy.
On Monday afternoon, law enforcement offers, together with the municipal guard, removed the white tent the protestors were camping out in, saying it was “threat to security”.
Following the removal, a small cluster of protesters held the fort in quiet prayer, standing before the makeshift cross and lanterns by the palace gates. They remained until a little after midnight.
Katyn tributes
As the tent was being cleared away in central Warsaw, President Bronislaw Komorowski continued his schedule of engagements in Smolensk yesterday with his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev.
The two leaders laid wreaths at the Polish Military Cemetery in Katyn in memory of the thousands of Polish officers murdered on Stalin’s orders by the Soviet secret police (NKVD) in the spring of 1940.
Later, the official delegation moved to the Polish cemetery, where an orchestra played the Polish national anthem. Ecumenical prayers by representatives of the catholic, orthodox, evangelical, Jewish and Islamic churches were said for the victims and a salvo fired.
Wreaths were laid by both heads of state and by the head of the Katyn Families Izabela Sariusz Skapska, whose father was killed in the April 2010 plane crash in Smolensk .
Earlier, the leaders visited the Russian part of the cemetery, where thousands of Russian citizens murdered in the Katyn forest during Stalinist rule were laid to rest.
Komorowski quoted the late president Lech Kaczynski’s words when he said: “The tragedy of Katyn and the struggle with the Katyn lie is an experience of several generations of Poles, it is part of our history, or memory and our identity. But this is also a part of the history of Europe and the world. It is a message which concerns all people and nations. The Katyn murder will always remind of the threat of subjugation and destruction of people and nations, of the power of a lie. But is will also testify that people and nations are able, even in the harshest times, to choose freedom and defend the truth.”
Moscow officially admitted guilt in 1990. Today's ceremonies will be the first time that the heads of both the Polish and Russian states have stood shoulder to shoulder in Katyn.
Backlash
Speaking to Polish Radio today, opposition Law and Justice MP Joachim Brudzinski dismissed Komorowski's visit, saying that “it was not a breakthrough” but “another empty gesture.”
In a separate interview with Polish Radio this morning, presidential advisor Professor Roman Kuzniar described the meeting as “an important step in the normalisation of mutual relations,” noting that it was difficult for both sides.
He stressed that there has been a breakthrough in the declassification of Katyn documents relating to the 1940 crime, noting that files are now flowing to Poland in successive waves, in contrast to the situation prior to the Smolensk crash. (nh)