Warsaw mayor calls on Jaruzelski to be stripped of his rank as a traitor

The mayor of Warsaw has called on former dictator Wojciech Jaruzelski to be stripped of his rank for his collaboration with the Soviet forces that invaded and occupied Poland, and condemned the country to two generations of communist rule.

Lech Kaczynski made the call after Russian President Vladimir Putin decorated Jaruzelski for his former services, and after Jaruzelski was quoted as warmly recalling the years he spent in Siberia.

Jaruzelski bitterly denounced the Warsaw mayor's allegation of treason, calling it "very painful" and a "moral punishment."

It's good to see that Poland still has truth-telling leaders like Kaczynski who won't cover up for the treason and other crimes of their countrymen.

"This is very painful," Jaruzelski said after Kaczynski's comment in May. "I have grown used to the [attacks] for martial law and the other things," he said, but added that it is intolerable to hear Lech Kaczynski say that "Russia is more my motherland than Poland and his brother calls me a traitor."

"Let them charge me for martial law, for other things, but this. . . ." AP quoted Jaruzelski as saying. "If someone is considered a traitor of the nation, this is not a physical, but a moral punishment."

It's about time.