Prague, June 25 (CTK) – The names of adults and children, victims of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, were read at a commemorative event organised by the Bez komunistu.cz (Without Communists.cz) group in Prague’s Kampa Park within a campaign “I go with my head held high” today.
The name of the campaign refers to th words of lawmaker and lawyer Milada Horakova, who wrote them on the day of her execution on June 27, 1950. The communist regime sentenced her based on fabricated charges of treason and conspiracy. Horakova (1901-50) was the only woman executed in the political trials in the 1950s and she became a symbol of the resistance to the communist regime.
Only a part of the about 1000 names on the list the group put up together were read today. Experts speak about 5000 to 10,000 victims of the communist regime, which ruled from 1948 until 1989.
They say the exact number cannot be ascertained because a heart attack or pneumonia were stated as the death reason in many cases.
The names read today did not only belong to the victims of judicial errors, but also people beaten to death in prison and during interrogation, prisoners held in labour camps and those killed in an attempt to fly the country at the border or during the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968 to crush the Prague Spring reform movement.
The list of dead children is also long. They died in prison where they were with their imprisoned mothers. Many of them are buried at Prague’s Dablice cemetery.
The Bez konunistu.cz is pushing for the Dablice burial place to be examined and the corpses identified.
“It is incomprehensible that the research was not started right after (the fall of the communist regime ) in 1989,” Petr Marek, from Bez komunistu.cz, told CTK.
The campaign organisers say the names reading is to prompt people against a repeat of the past horrors.
The campaign was launched on June 20 and it will continue with further events until Wednesday.
