Prague, Nov 14 (CTK) – Thousands of alarm-clocks will be ringing as a culmination of the celebration of the November 17 Czech national holiday on the day in question, organisers who are of the view that the values of democracy and freedom are being disputed or sacrificed from civic groups, have told journalists.
The alarm-clocks will start ringing at 19:30 CEST, at the moment the Communist police cordoned off a student protest march in the Prague centre on November 17, 1989 and then brutally beat them up, the organisers said.
The police violence triggered the events that led to the overthrow of the Communist regime in late November 1989.
In the evening of November 17, the Post Bellum group will award the National Memory Prize to the brave people who have defied totalitarian regime.
Along with four people who were sent to Communist forced labour camps where uranium was mined in the 1950s, the prize will go to Jiri Brady, a Holocaust survivor, organiser Mikulas Kroupa said.
President Milos Zeman did not decorate Brady on the October 28 national holiday. Culture Minister Daniel Herman (Christian Democrats, KDU-CSL) says Zeman deleted Brady from the list of the persons to be decorated after he had met the Tibetan Dalai Lama.
Zeman has dismissed the allegation.
The civic alarm will be the culmination of this year’s Freedom Festival with its commemorative events, concerts and an allegorical march.
This year, all the events are to symbolise the awakening of civic society, organiser Vaclav Nemec said.
“This is an event we have chosen for a symbolic time. We want to symbolically awaken society to make it defend democratic values and principles,” Nemec said.
“We believe that at present we can see how fragile and threatened the values of freedom and democracy are,” he added.
“We want to call on society to join more civic and political life, to be able to fight for the values and principles,” Nemec said.
The appeal the organisers have published cites specific steps with which to maintain freedom and democracy in the Czech Republic.
These are the recommendations to vote, to be interested in the fulfilment of election promises, to check elected representatives and to communicate with them and not to “yield space” to those who use democratic freedoms to suppress them.
The ceremony will start at the Hlavkova kolej campus 9:00 CEST on November 17 and at noon, along with students, rectors of several universities will deliver speeches. In the afternoon, there will be a concert at the Albertov campus.
The rally at the Wenceslas Square will be of the biggest importance. At 16:00, the Concert for the Future will start there with almost 50 performances.
The Day of Struggle for Freedom and Democracy on November 17 commemorates student demonstrations after the Nazi occupation in 1939 and against the Communist regime in 1989.
Organisers want to highlight the anniversary of both events, but also to “demonstrate against the policy of the Castle [the Presidential Office],” organiser Jan Cemper said.
“We are concerned about the ban to express one’s views during the Chinese visit (by President of China Xi Jinping in March), the servile letter to China and the banning of a government member to meet a clergymen,” he added.
On October 18, Zeman, Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka, Chamber of Deputies chairman Jan Hamacek and Senate chairman Milan Stech (all three Social Democrats, CSSD) issued a joint statement confirming that the Czech Republic fully respects China’s territorial integrity, including Tibet.
The letter said meetings of several Czech politicians with the Tibetan Dalai Lama were their private activities that do not mean any change in the Czech foreign policy.
This statement was widely discussed and a number of Czech politicians and public figures considered it servile and said its supporters gave in to the pressure of a foreign power and traded self-esteem of Czech citizens for possible business advantages.
