German president to meet former dissidents at Prague airport

Prague, Oct 9 (CTK) - New German President Joachim Gauck will meet signatories of the Charter 77 human rights manifesto and other civic society activists at the end of his visit to the Czech Republic on Wednesday, according to CTK information.

The meeting will probably take place at the old terminal of the Prague-Ruzyne airport, which now bears the name of the late Czechoslovak and Czech president Vaclav Havel, one of the Charter 77 founders and spokespersons.

The Charter 77 manifesto, issued in then communist Czechoslovakia on January 1, 1977, triggered one of the longest active anti-communist opposition movements in the former Soviet bloc.

Senate deputy chairman Petr Pithart (Christian Democrats, KDU-CSL) and activist Petr Uhl, both Charter 77 signatories, should attend the meeting with Gauck, along with former Czechoslovak ambassador to Berlin Frantisek Cerny, former MEP for German Greens Milan Horacek and Monika Pajerova, one of the leaders of the students' revolt in 1989, which brought the collapse of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.

The German embassy in Prague has not released the names of the meeting's participants and its concrete venue at the airport.

The embassy spokeswoman only said Gauck would meet people who had been involved in civic activities before and after the 1989 Velvet Revolution.

The embassy has apparently organised the meeting at Chauck's request since it is not included in his official programme, released by the Czech Presidential Office.

Horacek and Pajerova are now members of the advisory group of the head of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (USTR) that also helped prepare Gauck's state visit to the Czech Republic.

During the visit on Wednesday, Gauck will first meet his Czech counterpart Vaclav Klaus. Prague Archbishop Dominik Duka will show him round St Vitus Cathedral at Prague Castle, the presidential seat. Gauck will also meet Prime Minister Petr Necas.

Later in the afternoon, Gauck and Klaus will visit Lidice village that was obliterated by the Nazis on June 10, 1942.

Gauck and Klaus will lay wreaths at the grave of the Lidice men and at the memorial to the murdered children. They also want to meet the survivors of the tragedy.

The presidents will be accompanied by USTR first deputy head Eduard Stehlik, expert in the Lidice events and an honorary citizen of the village. Stehlik has written a book on Lidice that won the main award in the category of museum books in 2004, and he is a co-author of the current exhibition in the Lidice memorial.

Lidice, a village near Prague with some 500 inhabitants, was razed to the ground under the pretext that its inhabitants collaborated with the Czechoslovak paratroopers who took part in the assassination of German Deputy Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich.

A total of 340 village inhabitants were killed. All 173 men were executed, the women and children were sent to concentration camps, while some of the children were selected for re-education in Germany. After the war, only 143 women and 17 children returned to Lidice.

Gauck will arrive in Prague in the year of the 70th anniversary of the Lidice obliteration.

In June, he sent a letter to Klaus in which he assured his Czech counterpart that Germany is aware of its historical responsibility for the massacres in Lidice and Lezaky (another Czech village razed to the ground by the Nazis during WWII) and share the pain for the victims.

He also expressed admiration of the Czechoslovak paratroopers who carried out an attack on the life of Heydrich in May 1942, which became a pretext for the obliteration of both villages.