Italian 1980s film on Havel screens in Prague

Prague, Feb 8 (CTK) - Young Anti-Politicians, a documentary film on Vaclav Havel and other former Czechoslovak dissidents secretly shot by Italian journalist Gabriele Nissim during his visits to Prague in the 1980s, was presented in the Czech Republic for the first time yesterday.

Nissim has initiated a petition to the European Parliament calling for making March 6 the European Day of the Just, of which Havel, the recently deceased former Czechoslovak and Czech president, is to be the key symbol.

Nissim asked Havel last year to join the petition, but the letter arrived in Prague only after Havel's death.

Former Czech dissident and former senator Daniel Kroupa said he considers the European Day of the Just a good idea.

In 1986, Nissim was making shots of Havel and other dissidents when he was collecting material on the 10th anniversary of the Charter 77 human rights manifesto. He used a small hand camera in open spaces in order to forestall wiretappings by the StB secret service.

Nissim said this had been the first type of the small hand camera and the secret police had not considered him any dangerous TV reporter thanks to it.

No one was interested in the cassettes at the Czech border on his way home because the border police thought they were music recordings.

The 20-minute film has already been screened in Italy and Switzerland.

Nissim said he had been surprised by the spying in the communist Prague in the 1980s. He said he got used to turning around in the street to check whether the secret police are not following him when he visited signatories of Charter 77, a human rights manifesto of the Czech opposition.

Nissim is a journalist, writer and historian. He follows the developments in Central and East Europe. He also takes interest in the fate of the Jewish community and in genocide as such, for instance, in Armenia, Cambodia, Rwanda and former Yugoslavia.