Prague, June 26 (CTK) – Former political prisoners, state representatives and politicians commemorated the victims of the Czechoslovak Communist regime at the Prague-Dablice cemetery at which about 200 of them, including at least 43 children, on Tuesday, one day before the anniversary of Milada Horakova’s execution.
The democratic politician Horakova was executed after a show trial on June 27, 1950, two years after the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia. She was the only woman among the executed within the show trials.
Jiri Linek, head of the Association of former political prisoners, told CTK that the number of Communist victims buried at the Dablice cemetery is not final because it is hard to identify the buried.
Linek said there have been data only about the political prisoners who had been imprisoned and executed in the Pankrac prison in Prague, but there had been more such places in Czechoslovakia.
Apart from 200 executed persons whose identity is known, about 600 people died during interrogations and further 4500 was tortured to death, for example in uranium mines, Linek said.
He recalled that the names of the people executed in the Pankrac prison after 1948 were considered top secret and they were released only in 1999. The Communist regime tried to deprive these people of their identity, he said.
Not even the relatives knew where they had been buried, he added.
Children who were imprisoned along with their mothers or those born to political prisoners during imprisonment had no chance to survive, Linek said.
Senate deputy chairwoman Miluse Horska said the bodies of all the victims, of whom there are thousands, should be exhumed and identified. Little is said about the crimes of Communism, she said.
Horska also said she feels ashamed that the new minority government of the ANO movement and the Social Democrats (CSSD) would be supported by the Communist Party (KSCM).
Chamber of Deputies deputy chairman Petr Fiala (Civic Democrats, ODS), who also took part in the commemorative event in Dablice, shared this view.
The right-wing opposition criticised the fact that the second government of Andrej Babis (ANO) will be appointed on the anniversary of Horakova’s execution.
The participants included Prague Archbishop Dominik Duka, Slovak Ambassador in Prague Peter Weiss and officials of nine other countries and representatives of universities and civic associations.
