Jokes That Visit Is Family ‘Invasion’ : Kennedy, in Poland, Gives Awards to Rights Activists

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) presented human rights awards to activists of the outlawed Solidarity labor movement Friday at the start of his five-day visit to Poland.

A cheering crowd of about 2,000 chanting “Long live Kennedy” greeted the senator outside Warsaw’s St. Stanislaw Kosta Church, where dissident Father Jerzy Popieluszko was buried in 1984 after being slain by Polish secret police.

Kennedy prayed and laid a wreath at the marble tomb and later presented one of the rights awards to the parents of the Roman Catholic priest.

The senator, who brought 14 family members with him, earlier joked with reporters that the trip “was the invasion of the Kennedys on Poland.”

The awards were given at a reception in the U.S. ambassador’s residence attended by 120 guests, most of them dissidents. There were no police visible at the entrance, and the dissidents’ arrivals were unobstructed.

Most Media Banned

However, most Western reporters were banned from the reception. The invited representatives of two American newspapers and one news agency were told that details of the ceremony were off the record.

Former Solidarity leader Zbigniew Bujak, who was arrested last year after living underground for several years, and Solidarity ideologist Adam Michnik were presented awards in the name of Kennedy’s brother, the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, whose widow, Ethel, was among the family visitors. Popieluszko’s parents received a bust of the late President John F. Kennedy, another brother.

Bujak and Michnik were released from prison last September under a government amnesty for political prisoners.

“The awards are the distinction for the whole Solidarity movement,” Bujak reportedly said in English at the ceremony.

Couldn’t Go to U.S.

The awards were announced last year, but Michnik and Bujak said they did not want to travel to Washington to receive them because the Communist authorities might bar their return.

Earlier in the day, after arriving at Warsaw’s Okecie Airport, Kennedy met Politburo member Jozef Czyrek. No details of their talks were released.

Today, Kennedy was scheduled to deliver a lecture at the Institute of International Affairs and to meet Poland’s primate, Roman Catholic Cardinal Jozef Glemp. He is to travel Sunday to Gdansk to meet Solidarity founder Lech Walesa. The senator was invited to Poland by the Sejm (Parliament).