Many traveled to Gdansk last weekend to attend a conference marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the day Lech Walesa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

A conference honouring the accomplishments of the Solidarity movement and drawing attention to lessons for democratic movements in today"s outposts of tyranny has been organized in Gdansk by the New Atlantic Initiative, an international organization working to broaden the community of democratic states.

Solidarity was successful in Poland but many societies worldwide are still waiting for democracy, stated the participants in Tuesday's Solidarity 25 Years Laterconference in Gdansk.

Dissidents from around the world will hold a conference this month in the northern Polish city of Gdansk as part of events to mark the 25th anniversary of the birth of Solidarity, the meeting's organisers said Tuesday.

Former Polish president Lech Walesa urges dissidents in countries still in the grip of dictators to draw inspiration from the Solidarity trade union he helped to found 25 years ago.

The managing director of the New Atlantic Initiative Radek Sikorski believes that the experience of the Solidarity trade union can build up confidence among opposition activists in undemocratic countries. This will be the aim of the Solidarity 25 Years Later - Lessons in Freedom Struggle conference to be held in Gdansk on Aug.30.

Twenty-five years ago, on August 31, 1980, as waves of strikes spread outward from the Lenin shipyard, Polish Communist authorities signed an agreement with the underground opposition movement, giving workers the right to be represented by a democratically elected trade union. Drawing inspiration from Christianity and democratic socialism, Solidarity’s bloodless...

Pope John Paul II taught the world, religious and non-religious alike, that a future worthy of man must be rooted in recognition of the incomparable dignity of the human person and a commitment on behalf of the human person.