(The following appeal, signed "Socialist Movement of Czechoslovak Citizens," has been distributed in Prague, Czechoslovakia. We have translated the text from the March 18 issue of Rouge, weekly newspaper of the Ligue Communiste, French
• section of the
Fourth International.]
Citizens:
Since the elections, the regime, which claims not to want political trials and promises that no one will be bothered because of his or her political opinions, has abandoned all restraint and taken the road of the most frenzied repression against those who do not wish to submit.
In November, even before the elections, some political leaders and renowned scientists were arrested -for example, Jaroslav Sabata, Jan Tesar, Rudolf Batek, and Ladislav Hejdanek, the student Jiri Müller, and a dozen others. They were accused of having distributed manifestos during the preelection period. Even if this were true, the fact remains that they have been persecuted for having wanted to remind the Czechoslovak citizens of certain provisions in the electoral law dealing with the rights of the electorate-provisions that the press deliberately ignored. When should citizens be allowed to express their political ideas if not during elections?
At the beginning of January the following were arrested: Milan Huebl, former member of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist party and rector of the CP college; Alfred Cerny, secretary of the regional organization of the party in Brno; the journalist Karel Kyncl; and Jan Sling, son of the Communist leader executed during the 1950s.
During the first week of February, while the persecution was not intensified, it took new forms. This time the police did not catch the usual thieves and prostitutes in their dragnet, but rather Marxist intellectuals.
In Prague alone, about 100 citizens were arrested, interrogated, and had their homes searched. The following, among others, had to spend several days in the Ruzyn prison: Rudolf Slansky, son of the Czechoslovak CP general secretary executed in 1952; the wife of the imprisoned Jan Sling (whose mother, a party functionary since before the war, was arrested at the same time in Bratislava); a number of scholars and professors, like Karel Kosik, Jaroslav Klofac, Karel Kaplan, Robert Kalivoda, Lubos Sochor, Frantisek Samalic; the historians Karel Bartosek and Josef Belda; the journalists Jiri Hochman, Jiri Dienstbier, Cestmir Suchy, Vladimir Nepras; the political officials, ex-members of the Prague regional committee of the party, Jaroslav Littera and Adolf Dorn; the former director of the information section of the Central Committee, Jan Kaspar; two professors at the CP college; the painter Jindrich Heger.
As the police dragnet did not have the expected practical success, most of the people arrested had to be released. Nevertheless, they find themselves constantly under threat of new arrest and interrogation.
Among others, Karel Kaplan, J. Littera, Karel Bartosek, and J. Hochman are still in jail.
•.. The police claim to be engaged in the investigation of "criminal activities." In reality, these interrogations of hundreds of citizens show that they are looking for something elsethe chance to avenge themselves for 1968. Several investigators have not hidden their intention to arrest J. Smrkovsky, nor their hatred of Dubcek. The police dragnets are reinforced by the speeches of the most reactionary elements, who demand a new purge.
This process, as we well know, has its own logic. As in the allegory of old, once the mill is started, it ends by crushing the very persons who set it in motion.
The circle closes not only around those who openly express their disagreement with the regime, but is ready to snare any citizen who might be accidentally involved-not as the result of engaging in any organized opposition- even including those who ally themselves with the regime in the hope of gaining security for themselves and their families.
We know that in these conditions open opposition would be futile and would only bring about new losses. Nevertheless, humbly submittin? to the repression would be tantamount to a confession of guilt. It would also mean that later on someone could claim that we share responsibility for what is going on today.
Each of us has a number of possibilities, more or less limited, to oppose the persecution of our friends and acquaintances, our coworkers and neighbors.
We express here our solidarity with the victims of the persecution; we will assist their families; we demand respect for the law; we refuse to grant the police more power than they lawfully command; we will not permit the persecuted to be fired from their jobs.
We can also help in other ways: refrain from unnecessary talk about things that would interest the secret police; do not hold on to clandestine leaflets or journals, but circulate them in the most rapid and safe way possible. During interrogations, we must declare that we know nothing, that we remember nothing, even when it seems the police already know everything, and even when they really do know something.
Confessions would be useless; they would only furnish the inquisitors with testimony to use against ourselves and others later on.
We draw the attention of the international communist movement, of democrats, communists, socialists, friends of Czechoslovakia, and all their organizations to the dangerous developments taking place in our country.
The present regime is destroying the last remaining rights and liberties of our citizens. It presents itself as socialist even while it destroys everything that represents the socialist ideals of our citizens.
In a situation where the Czechoslovak people are reduced to silence, the voices of the above organizations can contribute to curtailing the persecutions and can ensure that the destiny of Czechoslovakia and its people will not be forgotten during the upcoming Conference on European Security. O 408