Uncle Buck
Ghost Writer
- Jul 7, 2003
- 28,076
This appeared in today's Times and something similar happened to a well know Brighton fan on our last visit to the place in 1999;
From The Times
September 08, 2004
Polish night out for football drunks
BY KAMIL TCHOREK IN WARSAW AND MICHAEL HORSNELL
ENGLAND football fans arriving for tonight's World Cup qualifier in
Katowice have been warned to stay sober if they want to avoid the horrors of an izba wytrzezwien. The drying-out centres, a relic of the Stalinist era in which Polish law enforcers detain drunk people for up to 24 hours, are in place to deal with the England supporters. About 5,000 are expected. The official Polish line is that only drunk persons causing serious public nuisance are held overnight, until they sober up.
But some visiting fans, who admit that they were drunk at the time, speak of being dragged away and held for a night in a communal cell, having committed no other misdemeanour. "The police were gabbling at me in Polish; I didn't understand a word of it," Chris, a Briton in his thirties who would not disclose his surname, said. "I hadn't done anything wrong, so of course I protested and tried to escape." He said that he was denied a phone call to his next of kin, given a blood test without his consent and ordered to change into a regulation smock.
He was then strapped to a bed in a shared cell. In the morning he was given a breath test, charged £25 for the night and released. Dr Wachul, the chief of Warsaw's drying-out centre, said: "Many Britons pretend not to understand what is happening when they are taken. When they have sobered up and we let them go they understand very well. It is a lesson for the future." According to data provided by Dr Wachul, about 40,000
people a year are taken to the Warsaw centre, mostly because of
alcohol-related domestic violence. Only a small proportion of inmates return, which Dr Wachul regards as proof that the experience reforms people. But the strategy is controversial even in Poland. "Poles havebeen accustomed to this system since its inception in the time of Stalin," Zbigniew Holda, of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, said. "The experience is most harrowing for foreigners who have never heard of these places, don't know the language and don't know their rights." A spokesman for the Football Association refused to be drawn on the way the Poles deal with drunkenness. The FA has an allocation of 4,461 match tickets, of which 4,000 had been sold by yesterday. But some tickets will be available on the black market.
From The Times
September 08, 2004
Polish night out for football drunks
BY KAMIL TCHOREK IN WARSAW AND MICHAEL HORSNELL
ENGLAND football fans arriving for tonight's World Cup qualifier in
Katowice have been warned to stay sober if they want to avoid the horrors of an izba wytrzezwien. The drying-out centres, a relic of the Stalinist era in which Polish law enforcers detain drunk people for up to 24 hours, are in place to deal with the England supporters. About 5,000 are expected. The official Polish line is that only drunk persons causing serious public nuisance are held overnight, until they sober up.
But some visiting fans, who admit that they were drunk at the time, speak of being dragged away and held for a night in a communal cell, having committed no other misdemeanour. "The police were gabbling at me in Polish; I didn't understand a word of it," Chris, a Briton in his thirties who would not disclose his surname, said. "I hadn't done anything wrong, so of course I protested and tried to escape." He said that he was denied a phone call to his next of kin, given a blood test without his consent and ordered to change into a regulation smock.
He was then strapped to a bed in a shared cell. In the morning he was given a breath test, charged £25 for the night and released. Dr Wachul, the chief of Warsaw's drying-out centre, said: "Many Britons pretend not to understand what is happening when they are taken. When they have sobered up and we let them go they understand very well. It is a lesson for the future." According to data provided by Dr Wachul, about 40,000
people a year are taken to the Warsaw centre, mostly because of
alcohol-related domestic violence. Only a small proportion of inmates return, which Dr Wachul regards as proof that the experience reforms people. But the strategy is controversial even in Poland. "Poles havebeen accustomed to this system since its inception in the time of Stalin," Zbigniew Holda, of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, said. "The experience is most harrowing for foreigners who have never heard of these places, don't know the language and don't know their rights." A spokesman for the Football Association refused to be drawn on the way the Poles deal with drunkenness. The FA has an allocation of 4,461 match tickets, of which 4,000 had been sold by yesterday. But some tickets will be available on the black market.
