A turning point for the opposition in Czechoslovakia Anna LIBERA The fact that the repression of oppositionists in Czechoslovakia has not been on the front pages of the international papers for some time does not at all mean that the Husak regime has stopped persecuting people who think differently from it.
To the contrary, the recent reports that historic oppositionist figures such as Karel Bartosek and Karel Kyncl have emigrated, that the Charter 77 spokesman Ladislav Lys has been arrested are reminders that the Czechoslovak government is still waging unrelenting war against those who still oppose the normalization 14 years after it was imposed. It might even be said that the tightened the screws in the aftermath of the Polish events and following the appearances of new opposition nuclei that openly identified with the struggle of Solidarnosc. MORE SYSTEMATIC AND EFFECTIVE
REPRESSION
In October 1979, five leaders of the VONS (Committee to Defend Persons Unjustly Aceused) - Vaclav Havel, Petr Uhl, Jiri Dienstbier, Otta Bednarova, and Vaclav Benda — were given heavy sentences. But this was not the crest of the wave of repression that for ten years has swept over everyone and every group that has tried to uphold the spirit and ideas of the Prague Spring. It seems rather that it was a harbinger of a new more systematic 14 political repression. The new repression leaves no stone unturned. It aims at silencing every dissident voice in the country, oppositionists.
To these ends, every means is being used - multiplying trials, longer sentences, systematic recourse to the harshest prison regime, introducing the practice of house arrest, harassment of prisoners, a war of nerves against oppositionists still free (cat-and-mouse jailings, threats, physical violence; forced exile, or refusal to issue passports). A few examples indicate the breadth of this repression and its ef-
In November 1979, following the trial of the Vons "Five,' Albert Cerny, an actor and a member of VONS, as well as a signer of Charter 77, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison.
In April 1980, a young worker, Petr Cibulka, who was due to be released after two years in prison, had six months of maximum security imprisonment added to his term. This represented the start of a new practice by the authorities.
Rudolf Battek, a spokesman of Charter 77, and a former deputy to the Czechoslovak National Assembly, was arrested in April 1980 and sentenced a year later to seven and a half years in
On appeal, his sentence was reduced to five and a half years imprisonment and three years probation. This was also an innovation. Probation had previously been reserved for common-law convicts. (1)
The case of Battek, who has connections with the Second International and is against the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and criticizing the deficiencies of mines in Czechoslovakia.
A leader of the VONS, Jan Litomisky was sentenced in October 1981 to three years in prison and two years probation. At the same time, four young people were sentenced to terms of six to eighteen months for hanging hostile banners on public buildings on the occasion of the Czechoslovak Communist Party con-
In November 1981, Edward Kalinowski, a Polish Solidarnosc activist, was arrested while trying to bring 176 copies of the opposition journals Suedetcui and Listy into the country. He was sentenced to 16 months in prison.
A young conscientious objector, Jan Hrabina, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. The reason given for this harsh penalty was "the great danger that pacifist ideas represent to society in the present context." Hrabina had explained that his refusal to serve in the armed forces was motivated, among other things, by unwillingness to participate in any intervention by Warsaw Pact forces against the Polish workers.
In May 1982, Petr Pospichal, a young doing his military sentenced to two and a half years in prison for having Charter 77's activity in his
In July 1982, harsh sentences handed down against the young people involved in running an unofficial cultura Jirous (who had already served a term of four years) was sentenced to three and a half years in a maximum security prison -1. Probation involves the following oblig tions: 1) You have to supply the institutio keeping watch over you with full information to your resources, and offer proof on deman 2) You have to report regularly to this instit tion and it decides how often: 3)You have admit representatives of this institution your home any time; 4) You have to g prior notice of any change of residence.
and two years parole. Frantisek Starek was given two and a half years maximum security imprisonment and two years parole. And Michael Hytek and Milan Frick got respectively 18 and 15 months
Besides these cases, which are only a few examples (2), eighteen leading opposition figures were charged following the arrest of two young French people in May 1981, who were caught transporting clandestine literature. (3) Eight of them have been kept in prison for a year, apparently in preparation for a big show trial. But the Czechoslovak government postponed this under pressure from the Austrian government, which made the release of these oppositionists a condition for
Gustav Husak to Vienna
The Czechoslovak regime has been not content with merely putting the Charter 77 and VONS leaders in prison. Inside the prison walls, it continues to harass them and threaten them with extending their sentences (such a threat currently hangs over the head of Petr Uhl). It subjects them to every kind of humiliation, with the avowed objective of demoralizing them and discouraging them from resuming their activities after they get
The daily lives of the prisoners are filled with such harassment. For example, the dramatist Vaclav Havel has been forbidden to write. Obstacles have been put in the way of Petr Uhl having contact with his wife and children. Uhl is allowed only a one-hour visit every six months, and he has just had the right taken away to write a letter to his seven-year-old son once a month.
The harassment of the Charter 77 signers who remain free has made any kind of activity more and more difficult. That, together with the constant threat of being sent back to prison, has led many oppositionists to choose exile. This includes both historic opposition figures, such as Bartosek, Mlynarik, and Kyncl, and young activists such as Jan and Jiri Bednar or Zina Freundova.
In the last two years, the repres sion has spread to Catholic circles. This reflects the determination of the authorities to crush a source of opposition strongly stimulated by the Polish events. This determination seems to have been reinforced by the Vatican's decision to ban priests from participating in political organizations. In the East European countries in general and in Czechoslovakia in particular, this means breaking with the Catholic organizations that are appendages of the regime.
At the beginning of 1982, a new very sweeping repressive operation was launched in connection with an in vestigation of the distribution of leaflets expressing solidarity with the Polish workers in their fight against the state of war declaration. In a communique, the VONS pointed out that the four young workers arrested and charged - Jan and Josef Wunsch, Jitka Tumova, and Vaclav
Soukup - did not belong to the Charter 77 milieu. • The authorities want to change the initial charge - agitation (Article 100 of the penal code) into "subversion against the republic" (Article 98), which would enable them to impose heavier penalties.
to come down very quickly against this new opposition nucleus, ing under the direct influence of the Polish events and rejecting the legalistic ap. proach adopted by Charter 77.
Despite these arrests, this current of oppositionists, represented by the Revolutionary Action Group and the Organizing Committee for Free Trade Unions, continued their activity over 1982, opening up a new phase in the fight against the normalizers.
A NEW DIRECTION FOR THE OPPOSITION has The effectivehas highlighted limitations of out the weakwith the regime. It helped to make opposition." it was unable to confined
According to document, the mode of body?
The rigorous moral sense of the oppositionists, which rightly inspires admiration, can turn against them, the document goes on to explain, because it deprives them of "any possibility for having an effect on ordinary people." Who, in order to survive, are obliged to make compromises every day with the normalized society.
Such attitudes did not prepare the oppositionists to confront the new situation produced by growing economic difficulties: "The deepening of the economic crisis and the political crisis in our coun try," the document says, "is sooner or later going to generate rising discontent. It is difficult to predict the ways in which this will be expressed....If there is a properly functioning opposition movement at that point, its time will have come. It will begin by helping to give rational form to the collective consciousness and to focus the general will, and this will eventually put it in the leadership of a mass movement...We do not have to go far to find examples of this." In fact, Poland is not far away!
But externalness of Charter 77 to the society did not facilitate contacts with the elements that were beginning to becoming discontented "within the structures." In conclusion, the document lays out a general line of action that could enable the opposition to prepare for its new tasks. That is, to analyze the social and political problems of Czechos lovak society and develop links with people who work "within the structures" (the plants, the unions, the party).
A similar conclusion seems to have been drawn by young workers not linked to Charter 77 or to the VONS. Back in the spring of 1981, they made known their intention to intervene in the official unions to press them to do their job of defending the workers' interests. In April 1981, they addressed a letter indicating this to the Czechoslovak trade-union congress (the Revolutionary Union Movement, ROH) and formed the Organizing Committee for Free Unions.
Drawing the lessons of the repression that hit the members of Charter 77 and the VONS, they decided to remain anonymous. Given their weakness, they opted for systematic work at the base of the official unions.
Inspired by the Polish workers movement, the Organizing Committee for Free Trade Unions tried to popularize the example of its struggle in Czechoslovakia and build solidarity with it. In this way, it renewed an internationalist approach that had been long forgotten.
This reorientation of the Czechoslovak opposition reflected both in the document criticizing Charter 77 and in the activity of the Organizing Committee for Free Trade Unions is taking place under difficult conditions. The repression within the country and the evolution of the situation in Poland do not make the task of the oppositionists easy. They need our solidarity more than ever. "2. A new pamphlet providing the full list of the VONS communiques on repression can be obtained from the Comite du 5 Janvier pour une Tchecoslovaquie libre et socialiste," c/0
Veronique Chabrol,277, rue de Vaugirard, Paris
75015.
3. This includes the following persons: Jaromir
Horec, Eva Kanturkova, Karel Kyncl, Jan Mlynarik, Jan Rum., Jiri Ruml, Jirina Siklova,
Milan Simecka - all of whom are in prison; and Jiri Hajek, Ivan Havel, Olga Havlova, Karel Holomel, Josef Jablonicky, Zdenek Jrinsky, Majmir Klausky, Miroslav Kusy, Jaroslav Meznik, and Jiri Mueller, who are free.
4. For the text of this document, see the Paris magazine L'Alternative, No.18, September/
October 1982.