(The following article appeared in the October 26 issue of the French-language fortnightly Inprecor. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
In the months preceding the thirteenth anniversary of the August 21, 1968, Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia, the Czechoslovak bureaucrats unleashed a new wave of repression against democratic-rights activists.
The targets of the repression were activists in the Charter 77 movement and the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Persecuted (VONS), a Charter 77 subgroup. Charter 77 is a manifesto outlining a program of struggle for democratic rights. It was issued in January 1977 over the signatures of some 200 people. Since then it has gathered more than 1,200 public signatures.
VONS was set up in April 1978, and in 1979 was recognized by the International Federation for the Rights of Man (FIDH) as its Czechoslovak section.
On July 28, 1981, Rudolf Battek, a spokesperson for Charter 77 and a founding member of VONS, was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison and three years of house arrest.
Eighteen signers of Charter 77, eight of whom have been held under preventive detention since May 1981, are awaiting a trial that could strongly resemble the most sinister Stalinist show trials of the 1950s.
Open letter cites example of Poland
An October 5 open letter from representatives of Charter 77 reported on the "increase in authoritarian acts" by the government. The letter noted that "if the authorities are trying to show that Czechoslovakia will not experience a situation similar to the one in neighboring Poland, they should remember that the situation in Poland developed because the government did not solve the problems in time and covered up their existence, while repression provided no solution to those problems."
In October 1979 the Prague bureaucrats, undoubtedly anxious to complete the "normalization" that was upset by the appearance of Charter 77 and the establishment of VONS, sentenced five democratic-rights activists — Petr Uhl, Vaclav Havel, Jiri Dienstbier, Vaclav Benda, and Otta Bednarova — to prison terms ranging from three to five years. While this dealt a serious blow to the Charter 77 movement, it did not completely destroy it.
Since then we have seen the big strikes and changes in Poland since August 1980. In Czechoslovakia, the direct effects of the Polish situation seem to have been limited to strikes last autumn in the industrialized border area around Ostrava. But the Czechoslovak leaders are especially worried about the example posed by the very existence of an independent man: kenter other er union of 10 million members which the Polish bureaucrats and the Kremlin have thus far been unable to contain.
Perhaps more than anywhere else, in Czechoslovakia any sign of the Soviet Union's weakness in another country of the Eastern bloc could provide the workers — still traumatized by the military inervention in August 1968 — immense encouragement to struggle. This is all the more so because in Poland the detonating role played by the KOR (Committee for Social Self-Defense) also showed the impact that small oppositional groups, whose audience is mainly limited to an intellectual milieu, can have on the whole workers movement in a situation of social crisis.
'Rude Pravo' attacks Solidarity
That is also one of the reasons why the Czechoslovak Communist Party has gone to the head of the line in slandering Solidarity and admonishing the Polish bureaucrats. For example, in mid-June, during the preparations for the congress of the Polish United Workers Party (PUWP — the Communist Party) which was to prove to be unique of its kind, the Czechoslovak CP daily Rude Pravo sharply lashed out at the "enemies of Socialism in Poland who are rushing for power and seizing one position after another, thereby threatening the vert existence of the independent Polish state."
In line with the campaign launched at that time by the Kremlin, Rude Pravo referred to "the experience" gained by the Czechoslovak bureaucrats from the events of 1968 to encourage the PUP to "resolutely resist the counterrevolutionary elements."
This policy of attacks against Solidarity was combined with an increase in repression against the members of VONS and the signers of Charter 77. On May 6, 1981, eight signers of Charter 77, most of whom were intellectuals who were quite well known in the country and who played an important role in the diffusion of samizdat materials, were arrested.
Among the eight were journalists Karel Kyncl and Jiri Ruml; Eva Kanturkova, the author of Twelve Women in Prague; sociologist Jirina Silkova; and Jan Ruml, the son of Jiri Ruml and a member of the collective of spokespersons for Charter 77.
Along with nine other people, including the wife and brother of the imprisoned Vaclav
Havel, they were accused of "subversive activities on a large scale and in liason with abroad," which could carry sentences of up to ten years imprisonment.
Regime charges plot by 'emigré centers'
These arrests took place after the April 28 arrest of two French students, Gilles Thonon and Françoise Anis, who were accused of having "transported subversive documents and money destined for Czechoslovak citizens." The two were subsequently expelled from the country on May 20, after spending several weeks under interrogation in prison.
Although no link was ever established between the Czechoslovaks charged and the two French students who were arrested upon entering Czechoslovakia, the press waged an intense campaign against "foreign emigré organizations" and their emissaries who wanted "to destabilize" the country.
In an attempt to discredit the arrested activists, the June 30 Rude Pravo vilified "the emigré centers that seek, with the help of their stooges inside the country, various means to damage even the Czechoslovak economy."
And the mouthpiece of the Prague bureaucracy used this to make a parallel with Poland where, "without the injection of dollars and other things, the reactionary leaders of Solidarity and other dubious associations could not do very much."
Moreover, the arrest of the two French students seems to have been set up by Czechoslovak agents abroad because the authorities were waiting for their car. In fact, Agence France-Press notes that film showing the arrival of the students' van at the Dolni Dvoriste border post and the subsequent search of it was shown on Czechoslovak television on July 6. Frame-up of Rudolf Battek
By moving against well-known intellectuals whom it accuses of being in the pay of foreigners, the Czechoslovak bureaucracy gave a warning to all intellectuals who might be encouraged, especially since the events in Poland, to be somewhat more open in support of the activities of VONS and Charter 77.
It was in this climate that, on July 28, Charter 77 spokesperson and founding member of VONS Rudolf Battek was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison and three years of house arrest. He was found guilty in a speeded up trial that no foreign observer or lawyer was allowed to attend. Battek was accused, among other things, of having sent letters to Social Democratic leaders Willy Brandt of West Germany and Bruno Kreisky of Austria.
This sentence was a new, heavy blow to the democratic movement in Czechoslovakia, all the more so since numerous workers organizations abroad (like the French Socialist Party, the French General Confederation of Labor (CGT), and the European Social Democracy) had been mobilized around Battek's case.
When he was first arrested in Prague on June 14, 1980, Rudolf Battek was only indicted for "assault and battery on a representative of order" stemming from a shady incident that had all the earmarks of an organized provocation.
The charges were dropped in January 1981 as being baseless, although Rudolf Battek had already spent several months in prison. But then this charge was combined with another of
"subversive activities on a large scale directed against the Republic" for having written a supposedly "antisocialist" essay entitled "Liberty and the Regime," copies of which were found in Battek's home during a search dating back to October 3, 1979.
Finally last April, the prosecutor "reformulated" the charges, adding that Battek's offense had been committed "in connivance with foreign powers."