Hero of Solidarity movement said to be ‘unfortunately weak’ days after being booed by crowds at Trump speech in Warsaw

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The former Polish president Lech Wałęsa, the leader of the Solidarity movement that helped overthrow communism, has been taken to hospital with heart problems.

His son, Jarosław Wałęsa, said on Saturday his father was feeling “unfortunately weak”. The former president was being treated in the heart disease ward of the Gdańsk University clinic, in his home city.

On Thursday, the 73-year-old former Solidarity movement leader was booed by government-supporting crowds when he attended a speech by President Donald Trump in Warsaw.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lech Wałęsa leads a crowd at a shipyard in Gdańsk in 1983. Photograph: Jacques Langevin/AP

Poland’s administration is critical of Wałęsa’s role in the country’s politics. Wałęsa, a Nobel peace prize laureate, accuses the government of threatening democracy and hurting Poland’s ties with the EU’s leading nations.

He had been expected on Monday to lead a demonstration against monthly observances that Law and Justice (PiS), the ruling populist party, holds in memory of the former president Lech Kaczyński and 95 others killed in a 2010 plane crash in Russia. Kaczyński’s twin brother, Jarosław, is the head of PiS and Poland’s most powerful politician.

Wałęsa says the monthly observances are used to rally support for the ruling party.

The protest planned for central Warsaw will proceed even if Wałęsa cannot attend, said another pro-democracy activist, Władysław Frasyniuk.

In 1980, Wałęsa led a massive strike against Poland’s communist government, giving rise to the Solidarity freedom movement. Solidarity peacefully ousted the communists from power in 1989, ushering in democracy.

But Kaczyński claims that the transition included a secret deal that allowed the communists to retain some influence and wealth.