Former Polish president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Wałęsa has written a letter, co-signed by 38 other former political prisoners of Poland’s communist regime, to Donald Trump, condemning the US president’s treatment of Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukraine. “We watched your conversation with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine with horror and distaste,” wrote the group, referring to Trump’s meeting with Zelensky in the White House on Friday, at which the pair were expected to sign an agreement but which instead turned into an angry confrontation. “We were also horrified by the fact that the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation reminded us of the one we remember well from interrogations by the Security Service [SB, the communist secret police] and from courtrooms in communist courts,” they added. “Prosecutors and judges, commissioned by the all-powerful communist political police, also explained to us that they held all the cards and we had none,” wrote the signatories. “They demanded that we cease our activities, arguing that thousands of innocent people were suffering because of us.” (…) “The history of the 20th century shows that every time the United States wanted to maintain distance from democratic values and its European allies, it ended up threatening itself,” they noted, adding that Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt had understood this when intervening in the two world wars.
via notesfrompoland: Wałęsa condemns Trump treatment of Zelensky, likening it to communist interrogation
siehe auch: Lech Wałęsa expresses ‘horror and distaste’ at Trump’s treatment of Zelenskyy Ex-Polish leader, who won Nobel prize for pro-democracy efforts, compares meeting to a communist interrogation. The former Polish president and Nobel peace prize winner Lech Wałęsa has signed a letter to Donald Trump expressing “horror and distaste” at his argument with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the White House last week. The letter, signed by Wałęsa and more than 30 former Polish political prisoners held during the communist era, said Trump and his vice-president’s demands that Zelenskyy show gratitude were “insulting” in the face of the Ukrainian country’s fight for freedom. The “atmosphere in the Oval Office reminded us of that which we remember well from interrogations” by Poland’s communist secret services and regime courts, the signatories said. “The prosecutors and the judges, working on behalf of the omnipotent Communist party police, also told us that they held all the cards, and we held none,” they said. “We are shocked that you treated Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the same way,” they said.