Prague, Nov 7 (CTK) – The BEZ komunistu.cz (Without Communists) platform will stage freedom and democracy celebrations in Narodni street in Prague centre on November 17, national holiday marking the 27th anniversary of the collapse of communism, Petr Marek, from the platform, told reporters yesterday.
The group also reminded of 99 years of the Bolshevik coup in Russia on November 7, 1917.
Though the form of communism has changed with time, it is still the ruling regime in some countries and is to blame for serious crimes, Marek said.
“We experienced it (communism) in our country for 40 years and we are still facing its consequences. We have not coped with it as much as we imagined on November 17 and the following days during the 1989 Velvet Revolution,” Marek pointed out.
The process of coping with the past ought to have started immediately after 1989 to punish the worst crimes and enable the society to more forward, he added.
Activists lit candles in Narodni street in memory of communist regime victims yesterday and they laid the most ill-famed symbols of communism – a sickle and a hammer there.
The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, officially known in the Soviet literature as the Great October Socialist Revolution, influenced the whole world, Marek said.
Like in the past, the BEZ komunistu.cz platform organises a human chain of people holding candles along the whole Narodni street at 17:00 on November 17.
“By these lights we at the same time remember all the people killed by communists. It was some 10,000 human lives in our country alone. The exact figures are not known since a number of death cases were covered up,” Marek said.
An event to celebrate freedom will start in Narodni street at 10:00. Students will be making a poll asking people why they love freedom. A discussion of the topic and an Internet presentation of the answers will be held later.
The Day of Struggle for Freedom and Democracy on November 17 commemorates student demonstrations under the Nazi occupation in 1939 and against the Communist regime in 1989.
Next autumn, the platform plans an educational project entitled “The Traces of Totalitarian Past” on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia.
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