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Mon 04 Apr 2007Poland's witch-huntThe drastic extension of Poland's law on collaboration with the former communist security services has now run into determined opposition from one of its most distinguished anti-communist leaders, Dr Bronislaw Geremek.A founder member of the Solidarity trade union, several times minister and medieval historian he is now a member of the European Parliament. His outright refusal to obey the new law which demands that 700,000 Poles declare whether they "secretly or knowingly" gave such information will severely test its ethical and political credentials. As he says, it "threatens freedom of speech, media freedom and the autonomy of the individual. It creates a kind of ministry of truth or a police of memory."