20 OCTOBER


1.
STILL PHOTOGRAPHS OF people gathering in Katowice. (3 SHOTS)
0.09

2.
GV Katowice street scene on 21 October.
0.12

3.
SV TILT DOWN Man showing photographs to press.
0.27

4.
CU Still photographs of Katyn burials. (2 SHOTS)
0.29

5.
SCU Man and then woman speaking to press. (2 SHOTS)
0.53

6.
GV & LONG VIEW People in Katowice street. (2 SHOTS)
1.00

7.
CU PULL BACK TO SV Solidarity official speaking.
1.06

8.
SVs Polish army colonel being interviewed on television. (2 SHOTS)
1.12

9.
SV Grave on television.
1.22

10.
SV ZOOM IN TO CU Lech Walesa at press conference.
1.37


SPEECH (TRANSCRIPT) THROUGHOUT



COCHRAN: "Polish Television showed still pictures of the crowd gathering in Katowice yesterday. But no pictures were released of the pushing, shoving and tear-gas. Today (21 October), Katowice was quiet but tense. A young man who escaped arrest yesterday said the trouble started when he, and four other Solidarity activist, were selling union publications and pictures, some of which showed the graves of thousands of Polish officers shot during World War Two. In 1943, the German Army claimed that it discovered the corpses in Katyn in the Soviet Union and that the Soviets had executed the Poles. Moscow has always denied and guilt for the massacre. The Solidarity members said that these pictures should not be illegal, they are just history, he said. All Poles know about the massacre. This young woman said that the police shoved us around, and called us ugly names I can't repeat here. As word of the clash spread last night, hundreds of people, especially young people, moved down the street overturning a police car and stoning the police station. A Solidarity official said he eventually persuaded the crowd to leave, narrowly preventing bloodshed. An army colonel said on television that local Solidarity chapters had repeatedly spread anti-Soviet propaganda which, he says, is dangerous because it influences young people. Polish TV also reported that young vandals had desecrated many Soviet military graves. Tonight Lech Walesa returned from France to deal with the Polish Primate, Archbishop Glemp, who met earlier today with the Communist Party's new leader, General Jaruzelski. John Cochran, NBC News, Warsaw."





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REPORTER: JOHN COCHRAN

Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: INTRODUCTION Leaders of the independent union Solidarity on Thursday (22 October) debated calling a one-hour national strike in response to police action against their members. The threatened protest follows clashes between police and Solidarity sympathisers in the southern city of Katowice on Tuesday (20 October), which set off an outbreak of strikes throughout the country. These latest disturbances have brought relations between Solidarity and the Polish government to a new low, as John Cochran of NBC News reports.