Hope and Reality: Poland and the Conference on Security and ...

wanted to introduce recommendations which would raise <strong>the</strong> level of consular,legal <strong>and</strong> medical help available for people traveling outside of <strong>the</strong>ir homel<strong>and</strong>s.They expected Western visa policy to be liberalized <strong>and</strong> freedom of travel not tobe limited to “freedom to emigrate.” The Polish delegates also presented aproposal that domestic law should be brought into compliance with bothinternational law <strong>and</strong> past CSCE decisions. In <strong>the</strong> end this stipulation wasadopted. 128The Poles <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> Hungarians, in contrast to more dogmatic bloc countrieslike East Germany, Czechoslovakia, <strong>and</strong> Romania, did not set up obstacles toaccepting recommendations concerning <strong>the</strong> freedom of religion <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> freedom totravel in <strong>the</strong> final document. 129 In Pol<strong>and</strong>’s case, <strong>the</strong> position of Catholics wasrelatively strong <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> Catholic Church had <strong>the</strong> right to participate in you<strong>the</strong>ducation <strong>and</strong> to organize religious classes, youth societies <strong>and</strong> holiday activities.On <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r h<strong>and</strong>, before <strong>the</strong> Vienna conference during one of <strong>the</strong> bloc meetingsit was agreed that freedom of religion could be discussed <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> bloc countrieswould not oppose it. For promoting political changes in <strong>the</strong> bloc countries, <strong>the</strong>most important decisions concerned halting foreign broadcast jamming,reaffirmation of <strong>the</strong> right to <strong>the</strong> secrecy of correspondence, <strong>and</strong> recognizingprisoners’ right to humane treatment. According to one witness, <strong>the</strong> Poles becameobjects of criticism from some bloc countries because <strong>the</strong>y were allegedly ‘sellingout <strong>the</strong> interests of socialism’ because <strong>the</strong>y were more open than <strong>the</strong> rest of <strong>the</strong>bloc regarding questions of passport policy, <strong>the</strong> free flow of information, <strong>and</strong>provisions for national minorities, especially by <strong>the</strong> end of <strong>the</strong> conference. 130During a meeting held on 20 February 1989 <strong>the</strong> Polish government adopteda document entitled “Conclusions <strong>and</strong> Commitments for Pol<strong>and</strong> Arising from <strong>the</strong>Final Document of <strong>the</strong> CSCE <strong>Conference</strong> in Vienna.” Among <strong>the</strong> projecteddecisions were: <strong>the</strong> flow of information would be liberalized by amending <strong>the</strong> law128 Information note on <strong>the</strong> Vienna meeting, op. cit.129 Ibid.61