Prague, Jan 5 (CTK) – A temporary memorial marking a car chase of two founding members of the Charter 77 human rights movement, playwright Vaclav Havel and actor Pavel Landovsky, trying to mail its manifesto and StB communist secret police officers was placed on Thursday in a street in which the police arrested them.
The Czechoslovak police arrested the two dissidents in Prague’s 6th district on January 6, 1977 and seized about 200 envelopes with the manifesto signed by 242 people. During the chase, Havel managed to put about 40 envelopes in a mailbox in a side street, unnoticed by the police.
The Charter 77 movement started to be formed during a framed-up communist trial of young musicians in 1976. The manifesto called on the communist regime to implement the Helsinki Accords. Czechoslovakia was among the countries that signed the Helsinki Accords in 1975, pledging to have respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
About 1200 people signed the Charter 77 manifesto by the mid-1980s.
The temporary memorial is in the form of several mailboxes with keys, which contain texts of the manifesto.
The memorial symbolises how hard it was to get acquainted with the text of the manifesto under the communist regime, its author, student Martin Bruha, told CTK.
Zdenek Hazdra, director of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (USTR), said without Charter 77 freedom would not have been as natural as it is now.
One of the signatories, clergyman Zdenek Barta, said Charter 77 managed to connect separate groups, namely protestants, Catholics, reform communists and unofficial artists. The manifesto only demanded that the state observe its own rules, Barta said.
