Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Acting Deputy President, for the call and for getting my name correct. I will deal with Senator McGauran on another date, but I want to deal with a serious matter today. On 10 April, the nation of Poland suffered a tragic loss, in a part of the world associated with horror and brutality of the worst kind. The Polish President, Lech Kaczynski, along with his wife, Maria, and a high-level delegation of senior members of his government, was killed after their aircraft came down over north-west Russia. They were en route to the city of Smolensk to pay tribute to those who fell victim to a war crime of gross inhumanity perpetrated by Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union—the Katyn forest massacre.

Kaczynski, a titan of the Polish political landscape, has gone but the contribution that he and his peers in the Solidarity movement and the independent trade union movement made will live on well beyond today in the democratic institutions of Polish government that now stand testament to their great works. It was in the harsh and unforgiving environment of communist Poland that Kaczynski, an academic with qualifications in law and a doctorate in industrial relations, became active in the Polish trade union movement. Most notably, he was an activist for workers’ rights and democratic freedom. He became an influential figure within the Solidarity movement and a close ally of Lech Walesa, who was to become the first democratically elected leader of a free Poland. Walesa is also remembered for his lead role in forming Solidarity, as leader of the Gdansk Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee, to which Kaczynski was a senior adviser. An industrial dispute organised by this committee at the Gdansk shipyard was one of the pivotal events in bringing about the end of communist rule in Poland. This action took advantage of widespread discontentment, forcing the government to legalise trade unions independent of the communist state. This set the stage for disparate workers committees to unite under the Solidarity banner, which would eventually lead them to freedom and democratic elections a decade later.

Lech Kaczynski’s career in Polish government began in 1989 as a senator in the Polish Senat, representing the Gdansk region. By 1991, he held the post of security minister, a position where he played a hands-on role in exercising a strong commitment to ‘decommunising’ the machinery of government and redefining Poland’s national security regime. Kaczynski held the view that corruption was caused by the lasting influence of former communist agents and officials in public and corporate life. During his time as minister for justice, beginning in 2000, his public profile and respectability among Poles was buoyed by his firm and unapologetic stance against corruption in government and against the pervasive threat posed by serious and organised crime, including the Russian mafia. These same themes carried him to popularly elected office in his own right, first as Mayor of Warsaw, a post that he held until his election as President of Poland.

As President, Kaczynski’s policy successes include ratification of the Lisbon treaty and reforms to financial markets aimed at further integration into the European Union. He was seen as a nationalist but viewed the extension of Polish influence in regional and international forums as a foreign policy priority. He developed close ties between Poland and the state of Israel, expanding cultural links between the two nations. Helping to overcome differences between the Catholic and Jewish communities at home that had been created by wartime experience, Kaczynski was a leader who reached out to bring people together. As Mayor of Warsaw, he donated public land and money to establish a Museum of the History of Polish Jews in the city. In 2008, he was the first Polish head of state to attend a Jewish religious service, at the Nozyk Synagogue in Warsaw. President Kaczynski was acutely aware of the suffering of the Polish people in the last century of its history and lent the power of his office to commemorating their ordeal while seeking truth and reconciliation for the families and communities touched by the pain of such memories.

But the deepest wounds take a long time to heal, and the Katyn forest massacre was no exception. This act of mass murder saw the execution of 21,768 Polish prisoners of war, academics, professionals and law-makers at the hands of the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, an atrocity personally approved by Stalin and the most senior members of his politburo. It represented the loss of an entire generation of Polish community leaders—those most likely to resist communist control—and was indiscriminate. This incident had long been a roadblock to Polish-Russian relations, a result of the deception and secrecy of the Soviet government. Until 1990, when the Soviet Union finally declared the truth of its involvement, they had claimed that it was an act of Nazi Germany and was even included by Russian prosecutors in a list of charges at the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal. No former Soviet official has ever been prosecuted over the incident. For half a century, this represented the lack of trust between the Polish and Russian peoples. It was a truth too shameful to bear and an act too barbaric to forget.

The text of the speech President Kaczynski intended to give later in the day on 10 April is available on the President’s website. The importance of the Katyn incident as a lasting symbol of injustice in the minds of the Polish people is clearly evident in his words. This is what he was to say:

Lies about Katyn were a part of this attempt to deceive and historians even refer to them as the ‘founding lies’ of the Polish People’s Republic ... The world was never supposed to know the truth—families of the victims could not mourn them in public, could not grieve for them or pay them a decent last tribute ... The People’s Republic of Poland was based on lies about Katyn and now the truth about Katyn constitutes the foundation of a free Poland.

We have already seen strong symbolic steps towards a closer relationship for Poland and Russia and, on Russia’s part, unprecedented openness about the Katyn massacre. On 29 April, the Kremlin ordered the publication of once-secret documents relating to the atrocity on the internet. At a press conference shortly after the release of these files, the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, said:

Let everyone see what happened at that time, who made decisions, and who ordered the execution of Polish officers. All written documents are there, with all the signatures.

This is a potent symbol of increased transparency and a clear indication that Russia wants to set the record straight in order to improve future relations. On 9 May, President Medvedev further reinforced this move towards reconciliation, as he personally handed the Acting President of Poland, Bronislaw Komorowski, over 67 volumes of documents relating to the Katyn massacre and has vowed further cooperation.

The Russian Federation of today is not a totalitarian state with delusions of empire, as its predecessor surely was. It is an extremely different nation, one that has made tremendous progress on the path to democratic reform, free markets and open government. The political culture is no longer based on ideological withdrawal from development, commerce and the concept of a government accountable to its people. The call for closer ties between Russia and Poland has been echoed by Acting President Komorowski, who has said ‘President Lech Kaczynski’s testament must be fulfilled through rapprochement and reconciliation’ with Russia. He said further:

The truth about Katyn is a common test that both the Polish and Russian people have endured ... this truth could be a good basis for the development of relations between the two countries.

President Kaczynski’s efforts to achieve full disclosure over the Katyn forest massacre and his tragic loss in pursuing justice and recognition for the victims and their families have not been in vain. From this accident, the gaze of the world’s media has been drawn to Katyn and, through this, the world has learnt of the events that transpired there 70 years ago. The global community will now remember the victims and the man who fought with such determination for their memory.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the nation of Poland in this time of overwhelming national loss. Over the last century, the Polish have proven time and again their resilience of spirit, strong sense of community and ability to recover through seemingly insurmountable adversity. While President Kaczynski and the 92 other military, political and cultural leaders who travelled with him will be sorely missed by a grieving nation, the legacy of a democratic, free Poland, which they played such a pivotal role in shaping, will stand as a lasting monument to their service and sacrifice.