Prague, Jan 31 (CTK) – A Czech state attorney charged a man for voting in support of the banishment of two families of farmers within the Kulak operation organised by the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1953, Ondrej Stastny, spokesman for a Prague district state attorney’s office, told CTK on Tuesday.
The man was a member of a commission set up at a district authority in the Prague-East region. He may end up in prison for up to ten years for being an accomplice in power abuse, Stastny said.
The Czech judiciary is dealing with several other cases concerning the Kulak operation, within which well-off farmers were displaced and persecuted.
The country’s chief prosecutor, Pavel Zeman, recently ordered a court to reopen the case former municipal official Rudolf Pavlicek who persecuted farmers in the 1950s.
Zeman also reopened the cases of communist prosecutor Tomas Liptak who assisted in the banishment of farmers from their homes in Kralupy nad Vltavou, central Bohemia, and of a former senior police official in Turnov, north Bohemia.
The communist regime was relocating private farmers along with their families from 1951 to 1954 in order to weaken traditional village communities. The number of the relocated families is estimated at 3,000-4,000. They had to move to selected farms in areas remote from their homes and their property was confiscated by the state.
