Prague, Oct 10 (CTK) – Czech sociologist and journalist Libuse Silhanova, one of the first signatories of the Charter 77 anti-communist manifesto, died at the age of 87 years in Prague yesterday, her daughter Katerina Silhanova has told CTK.
Silhanova was human right advocate for decades and one of the founders of the Czechoslovak Helsinki Committee that she headed later.
She was awarded a medal of merit by former President Vaclav Havel in 2001.
Silhanova and her husband Venek Silhan, one of the leading personalities of the Prague Spring 1968 reform movement, signed the Charter 77 among the first signatories.
“I have known Libuse Silhanova both from Charter 77 and the work of the Czechoslovak and Czech Helsinki Committee. She participated in the human rights defence courageously at the times when it caused her immense troubles,” Ombudsman Anna Sabatova told CTK.
Silhanova continued in her efforts in this field after the collapse of the communist regime in 1989.
“Thanks to her, the Helsinki Committee survived… and her modest and tireless work turned it into a respected and functioning organisation even under the democratic regime,” Sabatova pointed out.
Silhanova, born on April 10, 1929, graduated from the Faculty of Arts of Charles University (UK) in Prague in 1957. Afterwards, she became a teacher and then an editor of the Svoboda publishers.
In 1964, she came to the University of Economics where she headed the laboratory of sociological research. In the second half of the 1960s, she worked in the UK’s Institute of Social and Political Sciences.
In 1957, Silhanova joined the pre-1989 Communist Party (KSC) where she belonged to its “reform wing.” She was expelled from the KSC in 1970 for her open protest against the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 that crushed the reform movement in the country.
At the end of the 1960s, Silhanova shortly worked at the Ministry of Youth and Sports. After its abolition, she was a manual worker. From 1973, she participated in a psychological research of children as an external worker. She was involved in the Helsinki Committee from 1988.
The funeral of Silhanova will take place in a close circle of the family and friends, including Charter 77 signatories, her daughter told CTK.
hol/dr/kva
