Gov't nods to compensation for "mining units" members

Prague, Feb 20 (CTK) - The Czech government Wednesday approved the Interior Ministry's proposal that people who served in the military road engineers battalions and mining units during the communist regime be also entitled to a one-off compensation, Deputy PM Karolina Peake (LIDEM) has told reporters.

The government thereby extended its regulation on financial compensation with the aim to attenuate wrongs caused by the communist regime.

So far former members of the Auxiliary Technical Battalions (PTP), to which men labelled as politically unreliable were sent, had the right to the financial compensation.

The proposal was approved with some changes, submitted by Government Legislative Council head Petr Mlsna, including the right to a compensation for widows of people sent to the military forced labour camps, Peake said after the government meeting.

The Interior Ministry has asked to extend the group of people who would be entitled to it primarily in reaction to the Prague City Court's verdict from last September.

Te court ruled that the character of service in the road engineer troops and in the mining units' camps can be qualified as an unlawful deprivation of freedom, similarly like unlawful custody and imprisonment for which a compensation is guaranteed.

People should receive 1800 crowns for every month of forced labour. They can ask for the compensation by the end of this year.

The Interior Ministry has registered some 2000 applications for compensation from former PTP members, while the total number of those who are still alive is twice higher, their association says.

The Interior Ministry puts the costs of the financial compensation at 230 million crowns,

The PTP were established in 1950, two years after the Communists seized power in then Czechoslovakia, for people qualified as enemies of the regime and they existed until 1955.

Its members were used for hard and often dangerous work.

The PTP comprised, for instance, priests, former businessmen, private farmers, who refused to join the collective farming cooperatives, aristocrats, intellectuals and students expelled from universities over their origin.

The physical work in harsh conditions connected with military training, ideological propaganda and various forms of humiliation were to get these people down and "reeducate" them in the spirit of the communist regime.