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114-614: KRRiT is an independent agency, with powers specified directly in the Polish Constitution, and members elected by the President and each of the chambers of the Parliament for 6-year terms. It was created in 1992 to manage the public media, previously tightly controlled by the state, and regulate private broadcasting, which was then emerging. The direct constitutional empowerment, election of members for very long terms by various branches of

228-656: A United Ireland . Irish republican dissident groups include the Irish Republican Socialist Party (founded in 1974 – its currently-inactive paramilitary wing is the Irish National Liberation Army ), Republican Sinn Féin (founded in 1986 – its paramilitary wing is the Continuity IRA ), and the 32 County Sovereignty Movement (founded in 1997 – its paramilitary wing is the Real IRA ). In 2006

342-509: A handwriting examination . Eventually, the requested examination concluded that the documents were authentic, which suggest he was a paid informant. Wałęsa previously said that he had signed a commitment to inform document, but that he had never acted on it. The dossier consists of two folders. The first is a "personal file" containing 90 pages of documents, including a handwritten commitment to cooperate with Polish Security Service dated 21 December 1970, and signed Lech Wałęsa – Bolek with

456-475: A Communist agent in 1970s. The most comprehensive analysis of Wałęsa's possible collaboration with secret police was provided in a 2008 book SB a Lech Wałęsa. Przyczynek do biografii  [ pl ] ( SB and Lech Wałęsa. Contribution to biography ). The book was written by two historians from the Institute of National Remembrance, Sławomir Cenckiewicz and Piotr Gontarczyk , and included documents from

570-621: A conspiracy to gain control over the private media (the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza and the TV station Polsat ) by falsifying the laws (in the strand of the Lew Rywin scandal referred to as "or newspapers" ( lub czasopisma , in honor of wording of the media law that was illegally switched after approval by the government), and using their broadcast licensing power to exert political and economical pressure over local private broadcasters. These events, and other corruption scandals revealed soon afterward, shattered

684-500: A documentary claiming Lech Kaczyński 's involvement in the FOZZ scandal just before the elections (later found to be baseless), and a general bias in coverage of political news. KRRiT was also in constant conflict with private broadcasters, for example forbidding RMF FM to air local news. The big problems however started only after the 2001 elections, when some members of the KRRiT were named in

798-502: A farmer. Lech had three elder full siblings; Izabela (1935–2012), Edward (born 1937) and Stanisław (born 1940); and three younger half-brothers; Tadeusz (born 1945), Zygmunt (born 1948) and Wojciech (1950–1988). In 1973, Lech's mother and stepfather emigrated to the US for economic reasons. They lived in Jersey City, New Jersey , where Feliksa died in a car accident in 1976 and Stanisław died of

912-687: A heart attack in 1981. Both of them were buried in Poland. In 1961, Lech graduated from primary and vocational school in nearby Chalin and Lipno as a qualified electrician. He worked as a car mechanic from 1962 to 1964, and then embarked on his two-year, obligatory military service, attaining the rank of corporal before beginning work on 12 July 1967 as an electrician at Lenin Shipyard ( Stocznia Gdańska im. Lenina ), now called Gdańsk Shipyard ( Stocznia Gdańska ) in Gdańsk . From early in his career, Wałęsa

1026-451: A pledge he would never admit his collaboration with secret police "not even to family"; the file also contains the confirmations of having received funds. The second is a "work file" which contains 279 pages of documents, including numerous reports by Bolek on his co-workers at Gdańsk Shipyard, and notes by Security Service officers from meetings with him. According to one note, Wałęsa agreed to collaborate out of fear of persecution after

1140-628: A religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 20th century, coinciding with the rise of authoritarian governments in countries such as Fascist Italy , Nazi Germany , Imperial Japan , Francoist Spain , the Soviet Union (and later Russia ), Saudi Arabia , North Korea , Turkey , Iran , China , and Turkmenistan . In the Western world , there are historical examples of people who have been considered and have considered themselves dissidents, such as

1254-538: A report stating its findings, which claimed that the collective detention of political prisoners by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a violation of the country's international legal obligations, as the authorities are holding the detainees without charge and not allowing them a chance to challenge their imprisonment. The imprisonment has also risked the safety of the detainees by posing fatal risks to their health by keeping them behind bars without providing proper medical aid amid

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1368-479: A report that she contributed to was falsified by the Biden administration. She said that the report falsely stated that Israel was not blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza. Dissidents and activists were among the earliest adopters of encrypted communications technology such as Tor and the dark web , turning to the technology as ways to resist totalitarian regimes, avoid censorship and control and protect privacy. Tor

1482-496: A requirement for those seeking high public office. According to the law, it is not a crime to have collaborated, but those who deny it and are found to have lied are banned from political life for ten years. The 2000 presidential election was the first use of this law. Despite helping Wałęsa in 2005 to receive the official status of a "victim of communist regime" from the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), this court ruling did not convince many Poles. In November 2009, Wałęsa sued

1596-457: A source of scholarly debate among historians. On 12 August 2000, Wałęsa, who was running a presidential campaign at the time, was cleared by the special Lustration Court of charges that he collaborated with the Communist-era secret services and reported on the activities of his fellow shipyard workers, due to the lack of evidence. Anti-Communists Piotr Naimski , one of the first members of

1710-564: A substantial reduction in foreign debts. Wałęsa supported Poland's entry into NATO and the European Union , both of which occurred after his presidency, in 1999 and 2004 , respectively. In the early 1990s, he proposed the creation of a sub-regional security system called NATO bis . The concept was supported by right-wing and populist movements in Poland but garnered little support abroad; Poland's neighbors, some of which (e.g. Lithuania ), had recently regained independence and tended to see

1824-447: Is known for his conservative stance on LGBT rights . In 2013, he said on Polish television: "I do not wish for this minority, which I tolerate and understand, to impose itself on the majority". Referring to Robert Biedroń , he argued that, considering they represent less than one percent of Polish society, homosexual MPs should sit "in the last row of the parliament, or even behind its walls". After sharp international criticism, including

1938-642: Is running her father's office in Gdańsk and Jarosław is a European MP. In 2008, Wałęsa underwent a coronary artery stent placement and the implantation of a cardiac pacemaker at the Houston Methodist Hospital in Houston , Texas . He underwent a heart operation in 2021. In January 2022, Wałęsa tested positive for COVID-19 . He said he had received three doses of the COVID-19 vaccine . In 1983, Wałęsa

2052-411: Is www.krrit.gov.pl Lech Wa%C5%82%C4%99sa Lech Wałęsa ( Polish pronunciation: [ˈlɛɣ vaˈwɛ̃sa] ; born 29 September 1943) is a Polish statesman, dissident , and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who served as the president of Poland between 1990 and 1995. After winning the 1990 election , Wałęsa became the first democratically elected president of Poland since 1926 and

2166-636: The 1995 Polish presidential election . In 1995, he established the Lech Wałęsa Institute . Since 1980, Wałęsa has received hundreds of prizes, honors and awards from multiple countries and organizations worldwide. He was named the Time Person of the Year (1981) and one of Time's 100 most important people of the 20th century (1999). He has received over forty honorary degrees, including from Harvard University and Columbia University , as well as dozens of

2280-404: The 1995 presidential election , winning 33.11 percent of the vote in the first round and 48.28 percent in the run-off against Aleksander Kwaśniewski , who represented the resurgent Polish post-Communist Democratic Left Alliance (SLD). Wałęsa's fate was sealed by his poor handling of the media; in televised debates he appeared incoherent and rude; in response to Kwaśniewski's extended hand at

2394-706: The Arab Spring , widely used Tor in order to stay safe while exchanging their ideas and agendas. Jamal Khashoggi was a Saudi American dissident and journalist. He was murdered inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul by agents of the Saudi government, allegedly at the behest of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman . Various other human rights activists from Saudi Arabia have been either silenced or punished. This also happens if

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2508-572: The European Parliament adopted a resolution on Bahrain, especially concerning the cases of detained dissidents Nabeel Rajab , Abdulhadi al-Khawaja and Ibrahim Sharif . With 48 votes in favor, the MEPs condemned Bahrain for its human rights violations and called for an immediate release of all the political activists , prisoners in conscience , human rights defenders , journalists and peaceful protesters. The European Parliament also demanded that

2622-589: The Institute of National Remembrance seized materials from the widow of Czesław Kiszczak , former minister of the Minister of Interior , that were said to document Wałęsa's role as a spy for the security services. In 2017, a handwriting study ordered by the government-controlled Institute of National Remembrance (INR), stated that signatures on several documents from the 1970s belonged to Wałęsa. The exact nature of Wałęsa's relationship with Security Service continues to be

2736-707: The Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee , coordinating the workers at Gdańsk and at 20 other plants in the region. On 31 August, the government, represented by Mieczysław Jagielski , signed an accord (the Gdańsk Agreement ) with the Strike Coordinating Committee. The agreement granted the Lenin Shipyard workers the right to strike and permitted them to form an independent trade union. The Strike Coordinating Committee legalized itself as

2850-581: The Lech Wałęsa Award.  [ pl ] In 2004, Gdańsk International Airport was officially renamed Gdańsk Lech Wałęsa Airport and Wałęsa's signature was incorporated into the airport's logo. A college hall in Northeastern Illinois University (Chicago), six streets, and five schools in Canada, France, Sweden and Poland also were named after Lech Wałęsa Wałęsa was named Man of

2964-845: The Mykonos restaurant assassinations , the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany actively silences exiled Iranian dissidents. Even so, in 2023, the Woman Life Freedom Movement won the Sakharov Prize and imprisoned anti-regime journalist Narges Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize . The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran condemned the decision. The UAE has been accused of imprisoning critics. Like many other Middle Eastern countries, it does not allow criticism of

3078-509: The Prague spring and led to much of the elite being removed from political and intellectual positions. In the ensuing era of normalization , the unlikely dissident union of former Communists, counter-cultural youth and Christians formed a so-called underground or 'parallel' culture, which led Charter 77 and related movements eventually meeting success in the Velvet Revolution , in which

3192-506: The San Francisco Board of Supervisors 's decision to rename Walesa Street as a result of these remarks, Wałęsa apologized for his comments, stressing that "being a man of old date, in my view one's sexual orientation should lie in one's intimate sphere". He said that his intentions were "distorted by the media" and that homosexuality should be respected. Over the following years, Wałęsa's views shifted, and he has voiced his support for

3306-593: The Soviet Bloc . The parliament elected Tadeusz Mazowiecki as the first non-Communist Prime Minister of Poland in over forty years. Following the June 1989 parliamentary elections, Wałęsa was disappointed that some of his former fellow campaigners were satisfied to govern alongside former Communists. He decided to run for the newly re-established office of president , using the slogan, "I don't want to, but I have to" ( "Nie chcę, ale muszę." ). On 9 December 1990, Wałęsa won

3420-590: The Soviet regime met protection and encouragement from correspondents. Following the etymology of the term, a dissident is considered to "sit apart" from the regime. As dissenters began self-identifying as dissidents , the term came to refer to an individual whose non-conformism was perceived to be for the good of a society. Political opposition in the USSR was barely visible and, with rare exceptions, of little consequence. Instead, an important element of dissident activity in

3534-495: The UK wrote a letter to the vice-chancellor of an educational institution, the University of Huddersfield , stating that it was at risk of “indirect implication in human rights abuse”. The university was running a master's course, MSc in security science, for the officers of Bahrain's Royal Academy of Policing, the building which was also being used for torturing dissidents. In April 2021,

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3648-434: The current government and by extension the previous regime , instead seeking the establishment of democratic institutions. A partnership council called Mahsa had formed between Reza Pahlavi and other opposition groups in support of the future of Iran’s democracy movement  [ fa ] in 2022. The government in 2023 charged 107 exiled Mujahideen with treason. Dissidents have formed Iran Human Rights . Despite

3762-520: The fall of communism . It was attached to citizens who criticized the practices or the authority of the communist party . Writers for the non-censored, non-conformist samizdat literature were criticized in the official newspapers. Soon, many of those who were dissatisfied with Eastern Bloc regimes began to self-identify as dissidents. This radically changed the meaning of the term: instead of being used in reference to an individual who opposes society, it came to refer to an individual whose non-conformism

3876-484: The migrant crisis in Europe , said: "watching the refugees on television, I noticed that ... they are well fed, well dressed and maybe even are richer than we are ... If Europe opens its gates, soon millions will come through and while living among us will start exercising their own customs, including beheading". In August 2017, ten Nobel Peace Prize laureates, including Wałęsa, urged Saudi Arabia to stop

3990-481: The presidential election , defeating Prime Minister Mazowiecki and other candidates to become Poland's first freely elected head of state in 63 years, and the first non-Communist head of state in 45 years. In 1993, he founded his own political party, the Nonpartisan Bloc for Support of Reforms ( BBWR ); the grouping's Polish-language acronym echoed that of Józef Piłsudski's " Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with

4104-700: The Óglaigh na hÉireann emerged, which is a splinter group of the Continuity IRA. Mark Smith was a mid-level British diplomat, who resigned as a counter-terrorism official at the British embassy in Dublin. He was protesting against the sale of British weapons to Israel and said that "the state of Israel is perpetrating war crimes in plain sight". Stacy Gilbert, who served in the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration resigned in protest because of

4218-477: The 1970s. In 2008, a book written by historians Sławomir Cenckiewicz and Piotr Gontarczyk titled SB a Lech Wałęsa. Przyczynek do biografii ( SB and Lech Wałęsa. Contribution to biography ) purported to show that Wałęsa, codenamed Bolek , had been an operative for the security services from 1970 to 1976. The issue of Wałęsa's alleged collaboration with the communist regime resurfaced again in February 2016, when

4332-525: The 1990s and the early 2000s. The post-communist head of the public Polish Television , Robert Kwiatkowski  [ pl ] , was widely accused of using it as a propaganda machine for the Democratic Left Alliance . Some of the early accusations include highly disproportional coverage of SLD in 1997-2001, when SLD leader Leszek Miller was given more airtime than all members of the government combined (according to some calculations), airing

4446-413: The 1995 presidential elections, the council soon became dominated by people connected to the post-communist left. Even the right-wing 1997-2001 Parliament couldn't reverse that, because of the long terms of KRRiT members and the presence of the members appointed by the President. Having won the next elections in 2001, the post-communists were able to retain control of the public media for the second part of

4560-719: The Bahraini government take all necessary measures to respect the law and make sure that its actions remain in full compliance with the international standards of human rights. In March 2023, Bahrain hosted a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. However, on 8 March 2023, officials cancelled the entry visas issued to the HRW officials on 30 January 2023 to attend the 146th Congress of the IPU. Bahraini authorities have imposed restrictions on expression, association and assembly in violation of

4674-695: The Director of the Polish Central Archives of Modern Records ( Archiwum Akt Nowych ) about the accompanying files documenting the collaboration of Wałęsa with the Polish Security Service and asks him not to publish this information until five years after Wałęsa's death. In his letter, Kiszczak said he kept the documents out of reach: before the 1989 revolution , trying to protect Wałęsa's reputation; and afterwards to make sure they did not disappear or were used for political reasons. This letter and

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4788-545: The Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza . In totalitarian countries, dissidents are often incarcerated or executed without explicit political accusations, or due to infringements of the very same laws they are opposing, or because they are supporting civil liberties such as freedom of speech . The term dissident was used in the Eastern Bloc , particularly in the Soviet Union , in the period following Joseph Stalin 's death until

4902-487: The Government ," of 1928–35, likewise an ostensibly non-political organization. During his presidency, Wałęsa saw Poland through privatization and transition to a free-market economy (the Balcerowicz Plan ), Poland's 1991 first completely free parliamentary elections , and a period of redefinition of the country's foreign relations . He successfully negotiated the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Poland and won

5016-569: The National Coordinating Committee of the Solidarność (Solidarity) Free Trade Union, and Wałęsa was chosen as chairman of the committee. The Solidarity trade union quickly grew, ultimately claiming over 10 million members—more than a quarter of Poland's population. Wałęsa's role in the strike, in the negotiations, and in the newly formed independent trade union gained him fame on the international stage. On 10 March 1981, through

5130-598: The Polish political class. These events were all tied into a complex scandal referred to as the Rywin Affair . In 2004 Robert Kwiatkowski  [ pl ] was replaced by a compromise candidate, Jan Dworak  [ it ; pl ] , as the head of Polish Television . Many parties taking part in 2005 elections proposed abandonment of the KRRiT. The official website of the National Broadcasting Council

5244-534: The Security Service, while the monthly salary at the time was about 3,500 zlotys. The authors said oppositionist activity in Poland in the first half of 1970s was minimal and Wałęsa's role in it was quite marginal. However, according to the book, despite formally renouncing his ties with Security Service in 1976, Wałęsa went on to have contacts with Communist officials. The authors also claim that during his 1990–1995 presidency, Wałęsa used his office to destroy

5358-509: The Sejm elections were referred to as "Wałęsa's team" or "Lech's team" because they had all appeared on their election posters with Wałęsa. While ostensibly only chairman of Solidarity, Wałęsa played a key role in practical politics. In August 1989, he persuaded leaders of parties formerly allied with the Communist party to form a non-Communist coalition government—the first non-Communist government in

5472-620: The Solidarity Trade Union. In mid-1988, he instigated work-stoppage strikes at the Gdańsk Shipyard. He was frequently hauled in for interrogations by the Polish secret police, the Security Service , during the 1980s. On many of these occasions, Danuta—who was even more anti-Communist than her husband—was known to openly taunt Security Service agents when they picked Lech up. After months of strikes and political deliberations, at

5586-613: The Soviet Union was informing society (both inside the Soviet Union and in foreign countries) about violation of laws and of human rights. Over time, the dissident movement created vivid awareness of Soviet Communist abuses. Soviet dissidents who criticized the state faced possible legal sanctions under the Soviet Criminal Code and faced the choice of exile , the mental hospital , or penal servitude . Anti-Soviet political behavior, in particular, being outspoken in opposition to

5700-814: The United States, Wałęsa was the first recipient of the Liberty Medal , in 1989. That year, he also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and became the first non-head-of-state to address a joint meeting of the United States Congress . In 2000, Wałęsa received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement . Wałęsa symbolically represented Europe by carrying the Olympic flag at

5814-681: The Workers' Defense Committee that led to the Solidarity trade union, and Antoni Macierewicz , Wałęsa's former Interior Minister , testified against him in the closed vetting trial. Naimski, who said he testified with a "heavy heart", expressed his disappointment that Wałęsa "made a mistake by not going openly to the public, and he has missed an important chance". According to Naimski, the court cleared Wałęsa on "technical grounds" because it did not find certain original documents—many of which had been destroyed since 1989—that offered sufficient proof that Wałęsa

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5928-473: The Year by Time magazine (1981), Financial Times (1980), Saudi Gazette (1989) and 12 other newspapers and magazines. He was awarded with over 45 honorary doctorates by universities around the world, including Harvard University and Sorbonne . He was named an honorary karate black belt by International Traditional Karate Federation . Wałęsa is also an honorary citizen of more than 30 cities, including London , Buffalo and Turin . In

6042-409: The accompanying documents had never been sent. On 16 February 2016, about three months after Kiszczak's death, his widow Maria approached the Institute of National Remembrance and offered to sell the documents to the archives for 90,000 zlotys ($ 23,000). However, according to Polish law, all documents of the political police must be handed in to the state. The administration of the institute notified

6156-412: The achievements of Polish Solidarity, educate young generations, promote democracy, and build civil society in Poland and around the world". In 1997, he founded a new party, Christian Democracy of the Third Polish Republic , hoping it would help him to successfully run in future elections. Wałęsa's contention for the 2000 presidential election ended with a crushing defeat when he polled 1.01 percent of

6270-405: The archives of the secret police that were inherited by the institute. Among the documents were registration cards, memos, notes from the secret police, and reports from the informant. The book's authors argue that Wałęsa, working under the code name Bolek , was a secret police informant from 1970 (after being released from jail) until 1976 (before he was fired from the shipyard). According to

6384-437: The archives. Until 2008, he denied having ever seen his Security Service file. After the publication of the book SB a Lech Wałęsa in 2008, he said that while he was president "I did borrow the file, but didn't remove anything from it. I saw there were some documents there about me and that they were clearly forgeries. I told my secretaries to tape up and seal the file. I wrote 'don't open' on it. But someone didn't obey, removed

6498-407: The authorities, demonstrating for reform, or even writing books – was defined as being simultaneously a criminal act (e.g., violation of Articles 70 or 190–1), a symptom (e.g., "delusion of reformism"), and a diagnosis (e.g., " sluggish schizophrenia "). Czechoslovak dissidents emerged after the 1948 Communist coup and increased after the Warsaw Pact invasion that ended the liberalizing moment of

6612-477: The authors, "he wrote reports and informed on more than 20 people and some of them were persecuted by the Communist police. He identified people and eavesdropped on his colleagues at work while they were listening to Radio Free Europe for example". The book describes the fate of seven of his alleged victims; information regarding others was destroyed or stolen from the files. According to them, Wałęsa received over 13,000 zlotys as remuneration for his services from

6726-404: The conclusion of the 10th plenary session of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR, the Polish Communist party), the government agreed to enter into Round Table Negotiations that lasted from February to April 1989. Wałęsa was an informal leader of the non-governmental side in the negotiations. During the talks, he traveled throughout Poland giving speeches in support of the negotiations. At

6840-627: The country's international human rights obligations. On 31 March 2023, three men, Jalal Al-Kassab, Redha Rajab and Mohammed Rajab, were sentenced to prison for a year and faced a fine in Bahrain. They were prosecuted under a law criminalizing the "ridicule" of all books recognized as religious in Bahrain, including the Quran and the Bible . The men were members of a Bahraini religious and cultural society that promotes open discussion of Islamic issues. Human rights groups claimed that they were indicted for exercising his freedom of expression . Iranian dissidents are composed of scattered groups that reject

6954-427: The country's president and prime minister, respectively. The main point of disagreement was the Kaczyńskis' focus on rooting out those who had been involved in Communist rule and their party's attempt to make public all the files of the former Communist secret police. Until then only members of the government and parliament had to declare any connection with the former security services. Wałęsa and his supporters argued

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7068-400: The deaths of over 30 workers, galvanized Wałęsa's views on the need for change. In June 1976, Wałęsa lost his job at the Gdańsk Shipyard because of his continued involvement in illegal unions, strikes, and a campaign to commemorate the victims of the 1970 protests. Afterwards, he worked as an electrician for several other companies but his activism led to him continually being laid off and he

7182-409: The dissidents. Several human rights organizations and international leaders have consistently denounced Bahrain's poor human rights records. The Human Rights Watch World Report 2021 also highlighted that Bahrain continued its repressive actions against the dissidents, including acts against online activities, peaceful critics and opposition activists. In January 2021, forty cross-party MPs of

7296-419: The end of the first of the two debates, he replied that the post-Communist leader could "shake his leg". After the election, Wałęsa said he was going into "political retirement" and his role in politics became increasingly marginal. After losing the 1995 election, Wałęsa announced he would return to work as an electrician at the Gdańsk Shipyard. Soon afterwards, he changed his mind and chose to travel around

7410-416: The end of the talks, the government signed an agreement to re-establish the Solidarity Trade Union and to organize semi-free elections to the Polish parliament; in accordance with the Round Table Agreement, only members of the Communist party and its allies could stand for 65 percent of the seats in the lower house, the Sejm . In December 1988, Wałęsa co-founded the Solidarity Citizens' Committee ; this

7524-418: The enemy. The more the better, until the enemy was weakened no more". Wałęsa held his position until 13 December 1981, when General Jaruzelski declared martial law in Poland . Wałęsa and many other Solidarity leaders and activists were arrested; he was incarcerated for 11 months until 14 November 1982 at Chylice , Otwock , and Arłamów ; eastern towns near the Soviet border. On 8 October 1982, Solidarity

7638-442: The evidence of his collaboration with the secret police by removing incriminating documents from the archives. According to the book, historians discovered that with the help of the state intelligence agency, Wałęsa, Interior Minister Andrzej Milczanowski, and other members of Wałęsa's administration had borrowed from the archives the secret police files that had connections to Wałęsa, and returned them with key pages removed. When it

7752-434: The executions of 14 young people for participating in the 2011–12 Saudi Arabian protests . In October 2024, Wałęsa described a victory by Donald Trump in the 2024 US presidential election as a "misfortune" both for the United States and the world, without providing further explanation. Despite the 2000 ruling of a special lustration court affirming his innocence, for many years there have been allegations that Wałęsa

7866-416: The files "lies, slander and forgeries", and said he "never took money and never made any spoken or written report on anyone". He said of the Polish public, which was about to believe in the allegations, "you have betrayed me, not me you", and "it was I who safely led Poland to a complete victory over communism". On 20 February 2016, Wałęsa wrote in his blog that a secret police officer had begged him to sign

7980-679: The financial documents in the 1970s because the officer had lost money entrusted to him to purchase a vehicle. Wałęsa appealed to the officer to step forward and clear him of the accusations. On 8 November 1969, Wałęsa married Mirosława Danuta Gołoś , who worked at a flower shop near the Lenin Shipyard where Wałęsa worked. Soon after they married, she began using her middle name more often than her first name, as per Lech's request. The couple had eight children; Bogdan (born 1970), Sławomir (born 1972), Przemysław (1974–2017), Jarosław (born 1976), Magdalena (born 1979), Anna (born 1980), Maria-Wiktoria (born 1982), and Brygida (born 1985). As of 2016 , Anna

8094-409: The first-ever Polish president elected by popular vote . A shipyard electrician by trade, Wałęsa became the leader of the Solidarity movement and led a successful pro-democratic effort, which in 1989 ended Communist rule in Poland and ushered in the end of the Cold War . While working at the Lenin Shipyard (now Gdańsk Shipyard), Wałęsa, an electrician, became a trade-union activist, for which he

8208-547: The formerly imprisoned writer and Charter 77 spokesperson Václav Havel became a key political leader. Aung San Suu Kyi is a famous Myanmar dissident who also won the Nobel Peace Prize. The term dissident has become the primary term to describe Irish republicans who politically continue to oppose Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and reject the outcome of the referendums on it. These political parties also have paramilitary wings which espouse violent methods to achieve

8322-483: The fragmentation of the Parliament, and ongoing conflict between the parliament and the president Lech Wałęsa , the council was in relative political balance, and so the public media weren't controlled by any particular party, while the private media were more concerned by economical expansion than politics. However, after the victory of the post-communist Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) in the 1993 parliamentary elections, and of their candidate Aleksander Kwaśniewski in

8436-415: The government, and requirement that the KRRiT members can't belong to a political party, give it very strong position, compared to similar agencies in other countries. It was considered crucial that the media be freed from political pressures. While theoretically apolitical, members of the council were de facto appointed by the political parties, in rough proportion to their power. For a few years, because of

8550-466: The government-affiliated INR in Warsaw announced it had seized a package of original documents that allegedly proved Wałęsa was a paid Security Service informant. The documents dated from the period 1970–1976; they were seized from the home of a recently deceased former interior minister, General Czesław Kiszczak. The documents' authenticity was confirmed by an archival expert, but the prosecutors demanded

8664-468: The government. Jaruzelski informed Wałęsa of the coming war games of the Warsaw Pact from 16 to 25 March, hoping he could help maintain the social order and avoid anti-Soviet remarks. Jaruzelski also reminded Wałęsa that Solidarity had used foreign funds. Wałęsa joked "We don't have to take only dollars. We can take corn, fertilizer, anything is okay. I told Mr. Kania before that I would take everything from

8778-584: The government. Many Emirati dissidents have been languishing in jail, some of them for a decade. A March 2023 report by HRW stated that Egyptian authorities systematically refused to issue or renew ID cards for dozens of foreign dissidents, journalists and human rights activists over the past few years. The denial was possibly intended to pressure them to return to near-certain persecution in Egypt. By arbitrarily denying citizens valid passports and other overseas identification documents, Egyptian authorities violated both

8892-810: The highest state orders, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom , the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath , and the French Grand Cross of Legion of Honour . In 1989, Wałęsa was the first foreign non-head of state to address the Joint Meeting of the U.S. Congress . The Gdańsk Lech Wałęsa Airport has borne his name since 2004. Wałęsa was born in Popowo , Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia , Germany ( German-occupied Poland ). His father, Bolesław Wałęsa (1909–1945),

9006-509: The individual lives outside the country. If a dissident is not a Saudi citizen, they will probably face deportation . The Fact Finding Panel (FFP), an independent jury of British parliamentary members and international attorneys, was tasked with reviewing the detention of former Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Nayef and Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz . In mid-December 2020, the panel published

9120-399: The introduction of same-sex marriage in Poland and has repeatedly met with Biedroń, whom he called "a talent" and "a future president of Poland". In 2013, Wałęsa suggested the creation of a political union between Poland and Germany. In 2014, in a widely publicized interview, Wałęsa expressed his disappointment in another Nobel laureate, US president Barack Obama : he told CNN, "When he

9234-505: The introduction of his former superior in the army, Wałęsa met Wojciech Jaruzelski for the first time in the office building of the Council of Ministers for three hours. During the meeting, Jaruzelski and Wałęsa agreed that mutual trust was necessary if the problems of Poland were to be solved. Wałęsa said "It's not the case that the name of socialism is bad. Only some people spoiled the name of socialism". He also complained about and criticized

9348-510: The leading underground weekly publication Tygodnik Mazowsze bore his motto, "Solidarity will not be divided or destroyed". Following a 1986 amnesty for Solidarity activists, Wałęsa co-founded the Provisional Council of NSZZ Solidarity ( Tymczasowa Rada NSZZ Solidarność ), the first overt legal Solidarity entity since the declaration of martial law. From 1987 to 1990, he organized and led the semi-illegal Provisional Executive Committee of

9462-417: The list after a wrenching internal debate about the virtues of honesty versus political discretion. In response to the publication of this list, President Wałęsa immediately engineered the fall of prime minister Jan Olszewski and the dismissal of Interior Minister Macierewicz. A parliamentary committee later concluded Wałęsa had not signed an agreement with the secret police. A 1997 Polish law made vetting

9576-485: The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic . Another monarchy of the Middle East , Bahrain , is known for violating the rights of peaceful critics of the government, including political activists and human rights defenders . A report released by Amnesty International in 2017 revealed that the country opted for several repressive tactics, including arbitrary detention, torture and harassment between June 2016 and June 2017 to crush

9690-671: The opening ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympics . In 2004, he represented ten newly acceded EU countries during the official accession ceremony in Strasbourg. In 1993, the heraldic authority of the Kingdom of Sweden assigned Wałęsa a personal coat of arms on the occasion of his admittance into the Royal Order of the Seraphim . Dissident A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system , doctrine , belief , policy , or institution . In

9804-577: The papers, now casting suspicion on me." Wałęsa's interior minister Andrzej Milczanowski denied the cover-up and said he "had full legal rights to make those documents available to President Wałęsa" and that "no original documents were removed from the file", which contained only photocopies. Wałęsa has offered conflicting statements regarding the authenticity of the documents. Initially he appeared to come close to an admission, saying in 1992, "in December 1970, I signed three or four documents" to escape from

9918-429: The president of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, over his repeated collaboration allegations. Five months later, Kaczyński failed to invite Wałęsa to the commemoration service at Katyn , which almost certainly saved Wałęsa's life because the presidential plane crashed , killing all on board. In August 2010, Wałęsa lost a libel case against Krzysztof Wyszkowski, his former fellow activist, who also publicly accused Wałęsa of being

10032-559: The proposal as Polish neo-imperialism . Wałęsa has been criticized for a confrontational style and for instigating "war at the top", whereby former Solidarity allies clashed with one another, causing annual changes of government. This increasingly isolated Wałęsa on the political scene. As he lost political allies, he came to be surrounded by people who were viewed by the public as incompetent and disreputable. Mudslinging during election campaigns tarnished his reputation. Some thought Wałęsa, an ex-electrician with no higher education,

10146-608: The prosecutor's office, which conducted a police search of the Kiszczaks' house and seized all the historic documents. Maria Kiszczak later said she had not read her husband's letter and had "made a mistake". For years, Wałęsa vehemently denied collaborating with the Polish Security Service and dismissed the incriminating files as forgeries created by the Security Service to compromise him. Wałęsa also denies that during his presidency he removed documents incriminating him from

10260-482: The publication of another biography connecting him with the secret police ( Lech Wałęsa: Idea and History by Pawel Zyzak), Wałęsa threatened to leave Poland if historians continue to question his past. He said that before revealing such information "a historian must decide whether this serves Poland". After the accusations against him resurfaced with the discovery of the Kiszczak dossier on 16 February 2016, Wałęsa called

10374-493: The secret police. In his 1987 autobiography A Way of Hope , Wałęsa said, "It is also the truth that I had not left that clash completely pure. They gave me a condition: sign! And then I signed." He denied he acted upon the collaboration agreement. However, in his later years Wałęsa said all the documents are forgeries and told the BBC in 2008, "you will not find any signature of mine agreeing to collaborate anywhere". In 2009, after

10488-558: The so-called transparency legislation advocated by the government might turn into a witch hunt and the more than 500,000 Poles who had possibly collaborated with the Communist secret police could face exposure. In 2011, Wałęsa rejected Lithuania 's Order of Vytautas the Great due to his concerns over the treatment of the Polish minority and Polish culture by the Lithuanian government. Wałęsa

10602-461: The underground Free Trade Unions of the Coast ( Wolne Związki Zawodowe Wybrzeża ). On 14 August 1980, another rise in food prices led to a strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, of which Wałęsa was one of the instigators. Wałęsa climbed over the shipyard fence and quickly became one of the strike leaders. The strike inspired other similar strikes in Gdańsk, which then spread across Poland. Wałęsa headed

10716-558: The vote. His humiliation was increased because Aleksander Kwaśniewski , who was re-elected in the first round with 54 percent of the vote, is a former Communist apparatchik . Wałęsa polled in seventh place, after which he announced his withdrawal from Polish politics. In 2006, Wałęsa quit Solidarity in protest of the union's support of the ruling right-wing Law and Justice party, and Lech and Jarosław Kaczyński —twin brothers who had been prominent in Solidarity and were now serving as

10830-507: The workers' protest in 1970. The documents also show that at first Bolek eagerly provided information on the opinions and actions of his co-workers and took money for the information, but his enthusiasm diminished and the quality of his information decreased until he was deemed no longer valuable and collaboration with him was terminated in 1976. The sealed dossier also contained a letter, hand-written by Kiszczak in April 1996, in which he informs

10944-478: The world on a lecture circuit . Wałęsa developed a portfolio of three lectures ("The Impact of an Expanded NATO on Global Security", "Democracy: The Never-Ending Battle" and "Solidarity: The New Millennium"), and reads them at universities and public events with an appearance fee of around £50,000 ($ 70,000). In 1995, he founded the Lech Wałęsa Institute , a think tank with a mission "to popularize

11058-525: Was a carpenter who was rounded up and interned in a forced labour camp at Młyniec (outpost of KL Stutthof ) by the German occupying forces before Lech was born. Bolesław returned home after the war but died two months later from exhaustion and illness. Lech's mother, Feliksa Wałęsa (née Kamieńska; 1915–1976), has been credited with shaping her son's beliefs and tenacity. After Bolesław's death, Feliksa remarried her brother-in-law, Stanisław Wałęsa (1917–1981),

11172-411: Was already so popular that most Poles did not believe the official media and dismissed the allegations as a manipulation by the Communist authorities. The book's first print run sold out in Poland within hours. The book received substantial coverage in the media, provoked nationwide debate, and was noted by the international press. Wałęsa vowed to sue the authors but never did. On 18 February 2016,

11286-490: Was an effective union leader capable of articulating what the workers felt but as president he had difficulty delegating power or navigating bureaucracy. Wałęsa's problems were compounded by the difficult transition to a market economy; in the long run it was seen as highly successful but it lost Wałęsa's government much popular support. Wałęsa's BBWR performed poorly in the 1993 parliamentary elections ; at times his popular support dwindled to 10 percent and he narrowly lost

11400-463: Was an informant of the Security Service of the Polish People's Republic (Służba Bezpieczeństwa or SB), the Communist security services, in his twenties. In his 2002 book titled The Polish Revolution: Solidarity , British historian Timothy Garton Ash writes that Wałęsa, while vehemently denying being a regular Security Service informer, admitted that he had "signed something" under interrogation in

11514-433: Was any to their name) would revert to the state. Soviet dissidents were people who disagreed with certain features in the embodiment of Soviet ideology and who were willing to speak out against them. The term dissident was used in the Soviet Union in the period following Joseph Stalin 's death until the fall of communism . It was used to refer to small groups of marginalized intellectuals whose modest challenges to

11628-493: Was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Since then, he has received more than 30 state decorations and more than 50 awards from 30 countries, including Order of the Bath (UK), Order of Merit (Germany), Legion of Honour (France) and European Human Rights Prize ( EU 1989). In 2011, he declined to accept the Lithuanian highest order , citing his displeasure at Lithuania's policy towards the Polish diaspora . In 2008, he established

11742-417: Was discovered at the turn of 1995/96, the following prosecutorial inquiry was discontinued for political reasons despite the case attracting much public attention. Sławomir Cenckiewicz also said that in 1983, when Wałęsa was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, the secret police tried to embarrass him and leaked information about Wałęsa's previous collaboration with the government. By this time though, Wałęsa

11856-415: Was elected there was great hope in the world. We were hoping that Obama would reclaim moral leadership for America, but that failed ...  in terms of politics and morality America no longer leads the world". Wałęsa also accused Obama of not deserving his Nobel Peace Prize ; during the 2012 US presidential campaign he endorsed Obama's opponent Mitt Romney . In September 2015, Wałęsa, referring to

11970-436: Was interested in workers' concerns; in 1968 he encouraged shipyard colleagues to boycott official rallies that condemned recent student strikes . He was a charismatic leader, who helped organize the illegal 1970 protests at the Gdańsk Shipyard when workers protested at the government's decree raising food prices and he was considered for the position of chairman of the strike committee. The strikes' outcome, which involved

12084-523: Was jobless for long periods. Wałęsa and his family were under constant surveillance by the Polish secret police ; his home and workplace were always bugged. Over the next few years, he was arrested several times for participating in dissident activities. Wałęsa worked closely with the Workers' Defence Committee ( KOR ), a group that emerged to lend aid to people arrested after the 1976 labor strikes and to their families. In June 1978, he became an activist of

12198-473: Was lying. In 1992, Naimski, as a head of the State Protection Office , started the process of screening people suspected of being Communist collaborators in Poland. In June that year, he helped Antoni Macierewicz prepare a list of 64 members of the government and parliament who were named as spies in the police records; these included Wałęsa, then the Polish president. Wałęsa's name was included on

12312-437: Was ostensibly an advisory body but in practice a political party that won the parliamentary elections in June 1989 . Solidarity took all the seats in the Sejm that were subject to free elections, and all but one seat in the newly re-established Senate . Wałęsa was one of Solidarity's most public figures; he was an active campaigner, appearing on many campaign posters, but did not run for parliament himself. Solidarity winners in

12426-521: Was outlawed, Wałęsa was again arrested. Released from custody, he continued his activism and was prominent in the establishment of the Round Table Agreement that led to the semi-free 1989 Polish legislative election and a Solidarity-led government. He presided over Poland's transition from Marxist–Leninist state socialism into a free-market capitalist liberal democracy , but his active role in Polish politics diminished after he narrowly lost

12540-407: Was outlawed. In 1983, Wałęsa applied to return to the Gdańsk Shipyard as an electrician. The same year, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize . He was unable to accept it himself, fearing Poland's government would not let him back into the country. His wife Danuta accepted the prize on his behalf. Through the mid-1980s, Wałęsa continued underground Solidarity-related activities. Every issue of

12654-467: Was perceived to be for the good of the society. In Hungary, the word disszidens was used in contemporary language for a person who had left for the West without permission (i.e. a defector), by illegally crossing the border or travelling abroad with a passport, but not returning and (sometimes) applying for asylum abroad. Such persons' citizenship was usually revoked, and their left behind property (if there

12768-407: Was persecuted by the government , placed under surveillance, fired in 1976, and arrested several times. In August 1980, he was instrumental in political negotiations that led to the ground-breaking Gdańsk Agreement between striking workers and the government. He co-founded the Solidarity trade-union, whose membership rose to over ten million. After martial law in Poland was imposed and Solidarity

12882-413: Was too plain-spoken and too undignified for the post of president. Others thought him too erratic in his views or complained he was too authoritarian and that he sought to strengthen his own power at the expense of the Sejm. Wałęsa's national security advisor Jacek Merkel credited the shortcomings of Wałęsa's presidency to his inability to comprehend the office of the president as an institution. He

12996-512: Was widely used by protestors against the Mubarak regime in Egypt in 2011. Tor allowed Egyptian dissidents to communicate anonymously and securely, while sharing sensitive information. Also, Syrian rebels widely used Tor in order to share with the world all of the horrors that they witnessed in their country. Moreover, anti-government dissidents in Lebanon, Mauritania, as well as other nations affected by

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