Poland: Squeeze Play

A warning to the press

It all began with a mysterious telephone call to United Press International's Warsaw bureau last Tuesday morning. A man's voice announced that an unexpected shipment of film would be arriving on the 10 a.m. train from Gdansk. But when the U.S. wire service's secretary arrived at the train station to collect the package, she was met by Polish police and whisked off for questioning. Seven hours later, police picked up U.P.I.'s accredited Warsaw correspondent, Ruth Gruber, 33, and a Polish U.P.I. reporter, Bogdan Turek, 46. After being held for 23 hours for possible "activities against the laws of the Polish People's Republic," Gruber was ordered to leave Poland on the ground that she had been "collecting materials of an espionage character." According to Polish authorities, the film shipment, which Gruber never saw, contained photographs of military installations on the Baltic coast. Describing the charges as "completely trumped up," Gruber said, "It is part of the continuing harassment of the Western press."

Although Gruber is the first accredited Western journalist to be expelled since the rise of the Solidarity trade union in the summer of 1980, her case is only the most dramatic instance of a systematic crackdown on foreign reporting from Poland. In December the Foreign Ministry refused to renew the accreditation of BBC Correspondent Kevin Ruane, ostensibly to protest a BBC docudrama on the early days of martial law. Last week the government withdrew the work permits of nine Polish staffers who are employed by Western press agencies as translators, secretaries and bookkeepers. The press agencies are appealing the decision. That the Polish authorities singled out Gruber for harassment came as no surprise to the Western press corps in Warsaw. Since she was assigned there in 1981, she has developed close contacts with Solidarity, ties she maintained even after martial law was declared. Polish authorities, it is believed, were particularly angered by the frequency with which her reports of illegal underground activities were broadcast into Poland by Western radio services like the Voice of America.

The new campaign is a significant development in Poland's treatment of Western journalists, who until recently had enjoyed much greater freedom to operate than those in other Soviet-bloc countries. The offensive against the Western press, says a Warsaw intellectual, is a further example of "the Sovietization of Poland." In a press conference last week, Government Spokesman Jerzy Urban ominously advised Western journalists not to go "beyond certain limits." He warned against any contact with the banned trade-union movement Solidarity or with "members of the opposition." Said Urban: "This kind of journalism does not suit us."

At the same time, the press crackdown reflects a hardening attitude toward Washington. Declared Urban: "The case is also connected with the policy of the United States toward Poland." In a strongly worded response, the State Department said that the charges against Gruber "appear to have been manufactured by the Polish security service" and that the incident reveals Warsaw's intent to cause "further deterioration" of its relations with Washington.