- Author(s):
- Parliamentary Assembly
- Origin
- See Doc. 4922, report of the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Demography. Text adopted by the Standing Committee, acting on behalf of the Assembly, on 2 July 1982.
- Thesaurus
The Assembly,
2. Stressing that the Polish army take-over on 13 December 1981 brutally interrupted the development of a popular movement of emancipation outside the official structures, among which must be counted the Communist Party (Polish United Workers' Party) controlled by the USSR ;
3. Believing that the recent strike movements in Poland, as well as the repression which followed and the exodus of thousands of Poles, are to be inserted in the same political framework of similar events which took place in other Eastern European countries, such as the German Democratic Republic, Hungary and Czechoslovakia ;
4. Regretting the capacity to forget of public opinion which is taken up by a number of serious events on the political scene and which seems to be less and less preoccupied with the Polish situation ;
5. Considering that the situation in Poland has not improved substantially ;
6. Condemning all policies which refuse to take account of respect for the fundamental rights of individuals and which regard expatriation- officially encouraged or not- of citizens liable to support political opposition or constitute potential dissent as a legitimate practice ;
7. Concerned by the fact that in Poland thousands of people are still detained in internment camps and that their number is constantly increasing ;
8. Reasserting the humanitarian and other principles contained in the "third basket" of the Helsinki Final Act, and stressing that the member states of the Council of Europe and democracies throughout the world should maintain and develop humanitarian aid and food aid to the suffering Polish people, under the control of non-governmental bodies to ensure that it will reach those who are in need ;
9. Considering that democratic countries cannot be satisfied with a simple stocktaking of waves of refugees who, periodically, leave their countries, in particular those under Soviet domination, limiting their action to finding resettlement countries for those unfortunate people, and believing that it is time to push democratic governments to adopt a common strategy towards the problem of refugees, in particular those from Eastern European countries ;
10. Concerned by the budgetary burden which Austria and Germany, the countries to which the flow of refugees is mostly directed, find themselves confronted with, and recognising this as a problem which goes beyond their financial possibilities ;
11. Welcoming the role played in the assistance of refugees by various countries and by international agencies such as the Intergovernmental Committee for Migration (ICM), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Committee of the Red Cross, and expressing its high appreciation of the action of the Churches,
12. Draws attention to the danger of considering the problem of refugees merely as a humanitarian one, separate from its causes ;
13. Launches an appeal against all interference in Poland's internal affairs ;
14. Appeals to the governments of the member states of the Council of Europe and also to non-European states, including those which have traditionally played an important role as host countries for refugees :
a to maintain and increase humanitarian aid and food aid to the suffering Polish people ;
b to receive those Polish refugees still seeking for a host country, and assure their integration in the country ;
c to continue to give political and financial support to the international and national agencies involved in the humanitarian task of assisting Polish refugees ;
d to maintain and increase their financial support to the countries offering first asylum ;
e to exert pressure on the Polish Government in order to obtain the liberation of the thousands of Polish citizens still in internment camps.
