Why we should ignore Poland's ugly witch-hunt

One of my favourite writers is the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, who died in January 2007. Perhaps the most famous reporter from the eastern bloc, he spent much of the last forty years in Africa, Central America and the Middle East recording the lunacy of the politics he saw unfold whilst trying to bend Western ears towards life in the developing world. To his critics, he seemed to enjoy his hijinks rather too much; certainly the number of scrapes he got himself into suggests he was drawn towards warfare through a greater force than a simple urge to report, perhaps, it has been suggested, he was gripped by a distasteful fascination with suffering and deprivation. (I personally don't agree that he was some sort of war-zone pleasure-seeker, reading the excellent passage in The Soccer War on the frustrating impotence he felt sat behind a desk is proof he was primarily a restless soul.) His fans recognise both his determination, which ensured he was witness to a lifetime of extraordinary events and his good fortune, which equipped him with a empathetic, integral voice to relate them.

This week, it was revealed on the front cover of Newsweek Poland that the country's most celebrated writer was in cahoots with the Communists. This sounds like tired news. To British ears, the concept of reds-under-the-bed immediately evokes Joseph McCarthy, 50s America, Tupperware and prefabs. The Cold War is now very much an old war. Unfortunately, in contemporary Poland, this is not the case. The country is currently led by President Lech Kaczynski and his twin brother Jaroslaw, the prime minister. The pair belong to the right-wing Law and Justice (PIS) party, who are firm advocates of the policy known as lustration. The etymology of lustration refers to the Latin word lustratio, meaning purification by religious rites. The concept has since been seized by former Soviet countries to mean the process by which ex-Communist secret service agents are exposed by the state.

The Kaczynski government has recently introduced a sad new piece of legislation demanding 700,000 public employees, including lawyers, journalists and teachers, to declare any involvement in Communist activity. The consequences of a confession are career suicide. Recognising the madness of this, the consistutional court threw out the legislation in the last few days. The government are currently considering their next move, possibilities include opening the police archives, revealing the identities of thousands of former agents.

The ethics behind lustration are deeply dubious. For young Poles who have known nothing but years of economic struggle and political unrest, Communism, and its agents is responsible. The government sees it as a chance for the nation to be publically renewed and, yes, purified, at the expense of a few convenient victims, who of course, happen to form much of the political opposition. Little has been made of the 'outing' of Kapuscinski in Britain. He does not have a particularly high profile here, but I hope that more than this, it is because even those that have heard simply do not care. His deal with the government whilst working for the state-owned news agency PAP enabled him to move freely across the world. We do not know what information he provided for the Communist cause. But we do know what he provided the literary world, and this is why his was a price worth paying.