A year in pictures: 1982
GETTY^ IMAGES/ALAMYWorkers unite
A group of demonstrators protests in Gda ́nsk, Poland on
May Day 1982, in defiance of the declaration of martial law
by head of state General Wojciech Jaruzelski the previous
December. They hold banners sporting the name Solidarność
(Solidarity), the trade union founded in Gda ́nsk two years
earlier and led by Lech Wałęsa. By 1981, Solidarność had ten
million members and, though banned by Jaruzelski, became
the foremost organisation pushing for wider workers’ rights,
social change and political liberalisation, playing a crucial
role in the return of Polish democracy in 1989.Sea change
Refugees from Vietnam attempt to cross the
South China Sea in a small vessel in 1982 –
a handful of the more than 800,000 ‘boat
people’ who fled the country following victory
for the communist north in the bloody Vietnam
War that ended in 1975, and from Cambodia
and Laos after communist regimes took power
in those states in the same year. The occupants
of this boat were lucky, being picked up by a ves-
sel of the humanitarian organisation Médecins
du Monde, founded in 1980 in reaction to this
crisis. Thousands of refugees fell victim to Thai
pirates, who seized possessions, raped women
and murdered those who resisted. Others
died from lack of food and water, or drowned
in stormy weather. Those who were rescued
were housed in temporary camps before being
resettled in western states, mostly following the
launch of a United Nations programme in 1979.