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Peace laureate Walesa 'unpleasantly suprised' by EU's Nobel

12 October 2012, 15:48 CET
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(WARSAW) - Lech Walesa, who won the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize for leading Poland's anti-communist movement, said Friday he was "unpleasantly surprised" that this year's award went to the European Union.

"Certainly the European Union is trying to change Europe and the world in a peaceful way, but it gets paid to do that," while individual activists routinely make sacrifices and take huge risks to do so, Walesa said.

He added that "in this world, there are many cases of personal activism".

In 1982, Walesa was held captive by Poland's then communist regime for his leadership of Solidarity, the Soviet bloc's first and only free trade union which negotiated a peaceful end to communism in Poland in 1989.

Poland became the first communist country to make a peaceful transition to democracy and capitalism, a process which saw the demise of the Soviet Union and ensuing end of the Cold War by 1991.

Walesa became Poland's first post-war democratically elected head of state in 1990.


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