Poland faces communist past

GDANSK, Poland, April 1 (UPI) -- A law requiring certain Poles to declare whether they collaborated with secret police is forcing Poland to face its communist past.

A controversial law went into effect March 15, requiring 700,000 civil servants, teachers and journalists to sign an oath declaring whether they collaborated with the communist secret police before the Solidarity movement took hold, marking the end of Communism in 1989, the Washington Post reported.

People who lie or refuse to sign are fired.

The law requiring the declaration is the backbone of the de-communization campaign, which began with the 2005 election of Lech Kaczynski as president and his twin Jaroslaw as prime minister.

Jacek Zakowski, a television commentator and columnist for Polityka magazine, said the statute was poorly worded, defining a collaborator as anyone who was in "a position of trust" with the communist authorities.

"I was in the underground in the 1980s, but even I don't know if I could be labeled a 'person of trust' or not," he said.

Meanwhile, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, 83, Poland's former military ruler, is to stand trial on charges he illegally declared martial law in 1981 to suppress the Solidarity labor movement that arose in Gdansk shipyards.