Czech dissident Jiří Dienstbier died

[pjotr]

Jiří Dienstbier

10.12.1989-27.6.1992 - Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs for OF movement



Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic in the years 1989-1992.

Born April 20, 1937. Married, 4 children.

Graduated from Faculty of Philosophy, Charles University in Prague, MA. Doctor honoris causa University of Burgundy, France 1993. Visiting Professor, Claremont Graduate University, California 1997-1998; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, 1999; Charles University, Prague 2001.

1958-69 Radio Prague commentator, correspondent in the Far East, Europe and USA. 1970-1989 after 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia worked as archivist, night watchman and stoker. After the establishment of the Civic Forum in November 1989, became the spokesman of its Coordinating Center till December 10, when appointed Foreign Minister.

Founder and Chairman of the Czech Council on Foreign Relations, member of International Press Institute, Commission on Global Governance. Ambassador-at-large, personal representative of President Havel in Group of 16 heads of states for multilateral cooperation and reform of the United Nations. 1998-2001 Special Rapporteur of the UNCHR in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

1977 J.Dienstbier was among the first signatories of Charter 77, a human rights movement based on International Covenants on Human Rights, and twice its spokesman (1979, 1985). In 1979 sentenced to three years in prison with other members of the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Persecuted. Maintained contacts with foreign politicians, academics and journalists and with independent civic organizations both in democratic and communist countries. Was one of the prominent Czech intellectuals centered around the Charter 77 who were preparing democratic political changes.

From 1968 until the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 published journals in samizdat, hundreds of articles and essays at home and abroad. His books, among others: Indonesia - from Sukarno to Suharto (1967), Radio against the Tanks (on civil defense against the Soviet occupation-1988), Dreaming of Europe (samizdat 1986, Prague 1990, in German: Träumen von Europa, Rohwolt 1991), From Dreams to Reality (1999).

Awards: PRO MERITO of the Council of Europe, T.G.Masaryk Medal, Maltese Cross, Korean Diplomatic Order, Berlin Bär Kultur Preis, Medal of the President of Italian Republic, World Press Freedom Hero (IPI Congress, Boston 2000).

Source: Czech foreign ministry

[pjotr]

Jiří Dienstbier



Jiří Dienstbier (ur. 20 kwietnia 1937 w Kladnie, zm. 8 stycznia 2011 w Pradze[1]) – byl czechosłowackim dziennikarzem, politykiem, pierwszy niekomunistycznym ministrem spraw zagranicznych Czechosłowacji w latach 1989-1992.

Życiorys

Urodził się w Kładnie, w 1958 roku wstąpił do Komunistycznej Partii Czechosłowacji. Był korespondentem redakcji zagranicznej radia czechosłowackiego. W latach 1960-1962 odbył służbę wojskową w radiowym batalionie obrony przeciwlotniczej w Pilznie. Podczas kryzysu kubańskiego wywalczył sobie prawo do wykorzystywania w relacjach informacji agencji zachodnich. W latach sześćdziesiątych należał do środowiska działającego na rzecz przemian demokratycznych. W 1968 roku brał udział w antyradzieckich audycjach radia czechosłowackiego. Jesienią wyjechał do USA. W listopadzie 1969 roku został zmuszony do powrotu do kraju. Po powrocie do kraju wraz z Karlem Kynclem i innymi został zwolniony z radia oraz wykluczony z Czechosłowackiego Związku Dziennikarzy i KPC. Został pozbawiony paszportu i możliwości działalności publicystycznej.


Jiří Dienstbier in 1968

W latach 1970–1979 pracował jako dokumentalista w Stowarzyszeniu Pracowni Projektowych (późniejszy Instytut Projektowy Rozbudowy Miasta Stołecznego Pragi). W 1976 roku został jednym z sygnatariuszy Karty 77. W 1978 roku założył czasopismo „Čtverec” (Kwadrat). Był jednym z 17 członków-założycieli organizacji VONS. W lutym 1979 roku został rzecznikiem Karty 77. W dniu 29 maja został zatrzymany razem z innymi 9 członkami organizacji VONS pod zarzutem działalności antypaństwowej. Wyrok odbywał w więzieniu w Ostrawie-Heřmanicach, pracując przy cięciu stali, oraz w więzieniu Bory w Pilznie, gdzie pracował w introligatorni. W maju 1982 roku otrzymał propozycję wyjazdu za granicę, z której nie skorzystał. Po opuszczeniu więzienia bezskutecznie poszukiwał pracy. Znalazł zatrudnienie na stanowisku magazyniera w Řempo. W lutym 1983 roku pracował jako stróż nocny w przedsiębiorstwie Montované stavby. W 1984 roku przeniósł się do kotłowni gazowej Metrostavu na Wyspie Rohańskiej w Pradze, gdzie pracował do 1989 roku.

W styczniu 1985 roku został ponownie rzecznikiem Karty 77. Jego współrzeczniczkami były Eva Kantůrkova i Petruška Šustrová. Opublikował także artykuły w prasie zachodniej oraz wydawał czasopismo „Komentáře” poświęcone polityce zagranicznej. W styczniu 1988 roku został członkiem, a następnie przewodniczącym rady redakcyjnej samizdatowej gazety „Lidové noviny”. Był również członkiem Koła Przyjaciół Solidarności Polsko-Czechosłowackiej oraz Ruchu Swobód Obywatelskich (HOS).

Po upadku komunizmu

Został działaczem Forum Obywatelskiego. Dnia 10 grudnia 1989 objął stanowisko ministra spraw zagranicznych w rządzie porozumienia narodowego. W czerwcu 1990 roku w pierwszych wolnych wyborach został wybrany do Izby Ludowej Zgromadzenia Federalnego Czeskiej i Słowackiej Republiki Federalnej z ramienia OF. W lutym 1991 roku został przewodniczącym Ruchu Obywatelskiego. Od 1992 roku pełni funkcję członka Komisji do spraw Zarządzania Globalnego. W latach 1994–1997 był członkiem Rady Miejskiej Pragi.

W 1995 roku został reprezentantem prezydenta Václava Havla w tzw. Grupie Carlssona. W latach 1997–1999 wykładał na Claremont Graduate University w Kalifornii oraz uniwersytecie Chapel Hill w Karolinie Północnej. W 1998 roku został mianowany specjalnym sprawozdawcą Komisji Praw Człowieka ONZ w byłej Jugosławii. W listopadzie 2000 roku kandydował bez powodzenia w wyborach uzupełniających do senatu z listy Czeskiej Partii Socjaldemokratycznej (ČSSD), w 2008 został wybrany z tej samej listy jako bezpartyjny do senatu z okręgu Kladno.

W 2007 r. był wymieniany jako możliwy kontrkandydat Wacława Klausa w wyborach prezydenckich. Skupił się wtedy na krytyce osobowości Klausa, który nie waha się sam oceniać i krytykować wszystko, niezależnie od racji stanu. Nawiązywał też do problemu globalnego ocieplenia, co do którego prezydent Klaus wypowiada często opinię sprzeczną z powszechnie uznaną.

Książki

* Noc začala ve tři ráno 1967
* Snění o Evropě (Marzenia o Europie) 1986
* Rozhlas proti tankům (Radio przeciwko czołgom) 1988
* Daň z krve 2002

Sztuki

* Vánoční dárek (Prezent gwiazdkowy) (1978)
* Petlice
* Kontest
* Hosté (Goście),

[pjotr]

Gazeta wyborcza
wyborcza.pl/1,91446,8919537,Czechy_Zmarl_b__dysydent_i_szef_dyplomacji_Jirzi_Dienstbier.html

Czech Radio
www.radio.cz/en/section/one-on-one/-jiri-dienstbier-from-prisoner-to-foreign-minister-

[tufta]

Jiri Dienstbier was well know in Poland too. So we had a lot of memorial aricles also.

[pjotr]

Jan 10, 2011 12:55:17 GMT 1 tufta said:

Jiri Dienstbier was well know in Poland too. So we had a lot of memorial aricles also.

In the Dutch newspapers and serious (quality media) magazines too.

Pieter

[tufta]

Jan 12, 2011 0:40:14 GMT 1 pjotr said:

Jan 10, 2011 12:55:17 GMT 1 tufta said:

Jiri Dienstbier was well know in Poland too. So we had a lot of memorial aricles also.

In the Dutch newspapers and serious (quality media) magazines too.

Pieter

Pieter, here is a summary from the Czech 'Lidove Noviny'

//Tribute to a late great dissident
10 January 2011 Lidové noviny Prague

Lidové noviny, along with the whole Czech press, pays tribute to a “great Czech statesman”, Jiří Dienstbier, who died on 8 January at the age of 73. Dienstbier was “a key figure in the 1989 revolution”, recalls president Václav Klaus. A journalist until the Soviet invasion in 1968, a signer of the Charter 77 human rights manifesto and an active member of the dissident movement in the Soviet bloc, for which he was persecuted by the Communist regime, he later became the first foreign minister of post-Communist Czechoslovakia. Adam Michnik, editor-in-chief of the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, remembers Communist era meetings between Czechoslovakian and Polish dissidents in the Krkonoše (Giant Mountains), on the border between the two countries, and this line from Dienstbier: “We had to have the revolution because we were fed up climbing to the summit every time we wanted to meet with Jacek Kuroń and other Polish friends.”//

[pjotr]

Jirí Dienstbier (1937-2010), the first post-communist dissident and foreign minister



Necrology

Jirí Dienstbier began as a Communist and ended with Vaclav Havel as one of the leading Czech dissidents.

When Jiri Dienstbier was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1989, the first non-communist minister after the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia, he first had a bath. Until then he had been a fireman or metal worker to make a living, the typical punishment for dissidents at that time.

Perhaps his biggest achievement was quickly succeeded in December 1989. Together with his former West German counterpart, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Dienstbier cut symbolically, with a large bar, the barbed wire of the Iron Curtain. These pictures were all over the world. Two years later he played an important role in the suppression of the Warsaw Pact.

Like many dissidents in Central Europe Dienstbier was initially a supporter of the later so detested communism. He joined the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1958, when he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. That step would hount him in later years. Regular allegations surfaced that Dienstbier, who in the sixties worked as a journalist, would have even collaborated with the secret police, the StB. How could his successful career in the Czechoslovak radio, including as a correspondent in the United States, have another explanation?

Dienstbier has always denied the allegations. In an interview in 2007, when his presidential campaign failed, he declared that the StB had done at that time, two attempts to recruit him. "But I have told them in absolute, no uncertain terms that I was a journalist and that I wanted to do nothing."

Anyway, during the Prague Spring in 1968, Dienstbier threw off his communist feathers definitively. He was together with Vaclav Havel one of the first signatories of the human rights manifesto Charta77 and frequently acted as spokesman for the dissident movement. In 1979 he was sentenced to three years in prison for his activities in Vons, a committee that gave legal and moral assistance to convicted dissidents. "Even in the hardest times, he always managed to cheer with his good humor, " Havel said Saturday.

In the nineties Dienstbier became politically somewhat into oblivion, but in 1998 he returned to the spotlight as UN envoy for human rights in the Balkans, a position he would hold until 2001. He quickly became controversial, including his fierce criticism of the NATO bombing in 1999. According to him it was no response to human rights violations but its cause. Later he would also condemn the unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo.

Dienstbier, who in 2008 was elected a senator, was 73 years old.

This article was published (in Dutch) in NRC Handelsblad on Monday, January 10, 2011, page 7

(Translation Google and Pieter Pluijgers - corrections-)

[pjotr]

The liberal Protestant christian newspaper Trouw (Loyalty)



Former Minister of Czechoslovakia deceased

(AP) - Jiri Dienstbier, the first foreign minister of Czechoslovakia after the fall of communism, deceased. He was 73 years old.

Dienstbier played an important role during the Velvet Revolution of 1989, led by Vaclav Havel and an end to 41 years in communist Czechoslovakia. Dienstbier was foreign minister until 1992.

Dienstbier, born April 20, 1937, worked as a correspondent for Czechoslovak radio in several countries, including the United States.

After the Soviet invasion in 1968, all the liberal reforms in Czechoslovakia head pressed, Dienstbier was a dissident and was imprisoned three years for anti-communist activities.


www.trouw.nl/nieuws/wereld/article3370918.ece/Voormalig_minister_Tsjecho-Slowakije_overleden.html

[pjotr]

In the New York Times



Jiri Dienstbier, Czech Dissident, Is Dead at 73

By JUDY DEMPSEY
Published: January 8, 2011


Jiri Dienstbier in 2004.
(Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/European Pressphoto Agency)

Jiri Dienstbier, one of Eastern Europe’s leading dissidents, who with Vaclav Havel helped topple Communism in Czechoslovakia, died Saturday in Prague. He was 73.

His death was announced by Czech state television. The cause was not specified.

Mr. Dienstbier’s death marked the passing of a journalist, raconteur, strategist and politician whose life encapsulated an era in which hopes once invested in Communism gave way to disillusionment, outright dissent, punishment and, finally, the crumbling of Communist rule.

In the case of Mr. Dienstbier, who became foreign minister after the so-called Velvet Revolution in 1989, that first meant enjoying the coveted privilege of working abroad as a journalist for official radio before being expelled from the Communist Party for supporting the crushed reforms of the 1968 Prague Spring.

Demoted to menial work, he was among the first to sign the human rights document Charter 77, and from 1979 to 1982 he was jailed with Mr. Havel for being a group spokesman.

“We experienced so much together,” Mr. Havel said in a personal written statement on his Web site (vaclavhavel.cz). “Jiri Dienstbier played an important role in the history of Czech modern journalism, politics and opposition movements. Even in the toughest moments, his good humor was a great encouragement for us all the time.”

Born on April 20, 1937, the son of a doctor in Kladno, west of Prague, Mr. Dienstbier joined the Communist Party in 1958. Within it, he had a good career into the late 1960s, with postings in the United States, Western Europe and Asia.

Travel was highly restricted for most people living behind the Iron Curtain, and Mr. Dienstbier’s postings and work gave him an eye, experience and fluency in English that later eased his contacts with foreigners interested in Charter 77.

A perennially cheerful, slightly rumpled presence, Mr. Dienstbier found his life changed by the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. Like tens of thousands of others, he was expelled from the Communist Party for criticizing the brutal end to the reforms of Alexander Dubcek.

The crushing of the Prague Spring, which dominated television screens in Western Europe and the United States, caught the attention of a postwar generation that sought more openness in every sphere of life.

Western governments eventually ceded to this mood. In Eastern Europe, Poland and Czechoslovakia were the two countries where young people most tried to follow suit. In Poland, the government incited an anti-Semitic campaign to tarnish the opposition, leading to an exodus of thousands of Jews.

In Czechoslovakia, a generation experienced the deadening of the Prague Spring. Some artists, like the film director Milos Forman, left. Others stayed, like the writer Bohumil Hrabal, who immortalized the menial labor that thousands had to accept in his short novel “Too Loud a Solitude,” in which Hanta, an old man operating a giant compactor for 35 years, rescues rare books, which he reads and hoards at home.

For his part, Mr. Dienstbier shrugged off intimidation and even imprisonment after signing Charter 77. In the same spirit, after becoming foreign minister, he tried to shrug off formality, eschewing neckties wherever possible.

After leaving the ministry, he served as special rapporteur for the United Nations Human Rights Commission in the former Yugoslavia and lectured at several universities worldwide. In 2008, he was elected to the Czech Senate.

He is survived by his wife, Jirina, a son and two daughters.

[pjotr]

Jiri Dienstbier, dissident pioneer of cross-border solidarity



Democracy advocates are mourning the loss of Jiri Dienstbier, a leading figure in the 1989 Velvet Revolution who went on to become post-communist Czechoslovakia’s first foreign minister.

“A friend of mine for many years has died,” said former Czech President Vaclav Havel. “We experienced so much together.”

His life “encapsulated an era in which hopes once invested in Communism gave way to disillusionment, outright dissent, punishment and, finally, the crumbling of Communist rule.”

Dienstbier, who died on Saturday, was one of the first signatories of the Charter 77 declaration which demanded compliance with UN human rights conventions and the 1975 Helsinki Accords. He was imprisoned from 1979-82 for his activities in support of the Committee in Defence of the Unjustly Persecuted (VONS). (Comment Pieter: VONS was in fact the Czech KOR)

Charter 77 inspired Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo and his fellow dissidents to draft the Charter 08 manifesto that similarly invokes China’s own constitution to demand political reform.

“Jiri Dienstbier played an important role in the history of Czech modern journalism, politics and opposition movements,” he said. “Even in the toughest moments, his good humor was a great encouragement for us all the time,” said Havel.

In 1991, Dienstbier accepted the National Endowment for Democracy’s prestigious award on Havel’s behalf.

The former journalist recognized the vital role that international solidarity and assistance played in undermining communist rule, especially in challenging the regime’s monopoly of information.

“The influence of samizdat newspapers in Czechoslovakia was strengthened by cooperation with world media and international press organizations,” he said. “Without this understanding from members of the international community, we could never have succeeded.”

As a leading force in the broader anti-Soviet dissident movement, Dienstbier’s influence extended beyond his homeland.

Former dissident Adam Michnik recalled that Czechoslovakian and Polish activists held strategy meetings in the Krkonoše (Giant Mountains) on the border between the two states.

“We had to have the revolution because we were fed up climbing to the summit every time we wanted to meet with Jacek Kuron and other Polish friends,” Dienstbier joked.

“It was typical of Jirka (Jiri): intelligent, witty, full of self-irony. He was like this,” said Michnik.

He recalled Dienstbier’s first visit to Poland in his capacity as Czechoslovak foreign minister in early 1990.

“Yesterday we were still criminal elements, while now we met as free people who contributed to the fall of the dictatorship,” he said.

The dissidents’ cross-border collaboration led to the formation of the Polish-Czech-Slovak Solidarity Foundation in Wroclaw in early November of 1989 which, Havel was later to credit with helping to inspire the Velvet Revolution.

[pjotr]

Cross-border solidarity – Solidarnosc’s other contribution to democracy

Poland’s Solidarity union movement made history by precipitating the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. No small achievement.

But it should also be credited with developing the concept and practice of incremental democratic enlargement. “Building on the gains in one country to extend support and solidarity to democracy movements in contiguous countries and beyond” – cross-border work – originated in the Polish-Czech-Slovak Solidarity. The Polish-Czech-Slovak Solidarity Foundation meetings continued throughout the 1980s on the “green border” in the Karkonosze Mountains.

That initiative brought together activists from Poland’s Workers’ Defense Committee (KOR) and Czechoslovakia’s Charter 77 dissidents, including Vaclav Havel and Jiří Dienstbier. In the aftermath of 1989, Polish activists were determined to support democracy in the country’s immediate neighborhood and in the larger geopolitical sphere of the former Soviet Bloc:

This determination was partly based on moral considerations, since these activists had received support in their struggle from organisations in the U.S. and Europe and felt an obligation to extend similar support to those still striving for democracy. But they also had political and strategic reasons for engaging in cross-border solidarity. Poland… lived in a dangerous neighborhood, and the lessons of history taught that its own democracy would not be secure if it was not buttressed and protected by compatible democracies in the Visegrad countries to the south and in Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic countries to the east and north.

That commitment is also reflected in the work of pro-democracy groups from the former Soviet bloc, including People in Need in the Czech Republic and People in Peril in Slovakia, while cross-border democratic solidarity has also spread to other regions around the world.

History of Polish-Czech-Slovak Solidarity

Polish Czech-Slovak Solidarity was created in October 1981 when members of independent circles - Charta 77 in Czechoslovakia, KSS KOR and "Solidarity" in Poland signed in conspiracy an act of mutual cooperation. The aim of Polish Czech-Slovak Solidarity (formerly Polish Czech Solidarity) was exchanging information about democratic ideas in Poland and Czechoslovakia and communists repressions against dissidents.

Declaring the Marshal Law in l3th of December 1981 and connected with it closing of the borders caused four months delay.

The years 1983 and 1984 were devoted to creating a network of places in which independent publications and printing equipment could be transferred. Thus PCSS members began a systematic action of exchanging information through mountain verdure areas called "green border". A network of couriers was established. They carried forbidden literature, documents instructions and printing materials through the mountains.

In the autumn 1983 inspired by PCSS a protest against a being prepared trial of late KSS KOR dissidents is sent to Polish government.

Until 1984 Prague and Wroclaw were the main centres of PCSS; in 1985 also Brno and Warsaw are included.

A year later a group of Czech and Slovak forbidden literature translators is established. A new series of literature is being created under the title "A Collection of Independent Czech and Slovak Literature" including works of Bohumil Hrabal, Josef Skvorecky, Vaclav Havel and Jan Pelc. In the meantime an archives of independent publications are being collected.

In January 1987 in Brno a member of VONS (Committee Supporting Unfairly Prosecuted), a signatory of Charta 77 and a member of PCSS Petr Pospichal is arrested. He was charged of spreading independent Polish press and having links with members of illegal "Solidarity". The Poles began to collect signatures under the petition demanding letting the Czech dissident out of prison. The document was passed to Czechoslovak Embassy in Warsaw.

In the same time in Podkowa Leśna a mass in that intention was celebrated. After that a cycle of lecture concerning Czechoslovak independent movements was begun together with Czechoslovak samizdat exhibition.



On l6th of April in the centre of Wroclaw PCSS organized a thousandwitnesses demonstration against the arrest of Petr Pospichal. Militia arrested all organizers who were released after 48 hours and had to pay 25 to 50 thousand zlotys for provoking the incident. During the demonstration some liflets saying: "SOS for Pospichal" were distributed in Wroclaw. The action exposed the underground organization.

In 1987 was the tenth anniversary of the establishment of Charta 77. To commemorate this PCSS released a calendar and a series of post stamps which positively sneaked into the current, official circulation. It forced Czech minister of Post and Communication to forbid to deliver letters with those stamps. Despite that a PCSS stamped letter was delivered to Petr Pospichal in prison.

In July 1987 after a many-hours meeting, on the Polish-Czechoslovak border a Circle of PCSS Friends is established. The declaration was signed' by over 20 democratic dissidents from both countries; among others: Vaclav Havel, Petr Uhl, Jan Carnogursky, Jacek Kuroń, Zbigniew Romaszewski and Zbigniew Bujak.



PCSS started it's own publishing activities on both sides of the border, exchange of information was continued, several work meetings on the border took place. Writing about those meetings one must enumerate names of Mieczysław 'Ducin' Piotrowski and Zbigniew Janas who frequently organized those meetings making the safety "transfers" of underground press, books and printing materials possible.

In September 1987 on "Friendship Route" under Snieżka mountain PCSS together with the movement "Freedom and Peace" organized an ecological action "Save Karkonosze Mountains".

In December 1987 a first issue of PCSS Bulletin was released (regularly printed to 1989). The first book of Independent Czech and Slovak Literature Collection was "I served the English King" by Bohumil Hrabal translated by Piotr Godlewski then "Excerpts from Auto memoir" by Josef Skvorecky, "Questioning" by Vaclav Havel, "...and it'll be worse" by Jan Pelc.

In March 1988 PCSS began the action "Patronage" addressing to all the citizens and organizations to support political prisoners and their families in Czechoslovakia (analogous action was organized in Czechoslovakia). It was propagated by PCSS Bulletin. There were new addresses of political prisoners and their families in new Bulletin issues, also information about those who joined the action on the both sides of the border.



An important action was the demonstration in front of Romanian Embassy in Warsaw by PCSS. It was a reaction upon February 1988 massacre in Timisoara.

In 1988 the repressions against democratic dissidents in Czechoslovakia and against members of "Freedom and Peace" strengthened. PCSS in Wroclaw and Prague proclaimed hunger strike. It lasted prisons was said. PCSS also passed the petition signed by 3500 people for Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia and ' in 1988/89 initiated mutual actions of young Catholics in Poland and Czechoslovakia.



In July 1988, during one of the big meetings in the mountains a declaration was signed in the 20th anniversary of Warsaw Pact invasion in Czechoslovakia.

In September 1988 The Conference of Human and Citizenship Rights was held in Cracow. There were also members of PCSS present. The only one representative from Czechoslovakia who could manage to come to Cracow was Charta 77 and a member of PCSS Aleksander Vondra.



The Polish Czech-Slovak Solidarity initiated East European Information Agency (WAI) that helped to exchange information among Prague, Warsaw, Budapest, Vilnius and Moscow.

PCSS members: Jerzy Kronhold, Marian Dembiniok and Zbigniew Machej on 2lst September 1989 organized a demonstration in Cieszyn in 2lst anniversary of Warsaw Pact invasion. During the demonstration people gathered there apologized Czechs and Slovaks for Polish soldiers that had taken part in it. There were some members of the Parliament of the Republic of Poland present.

The next PCSS actions were ecology marches organized along with Macierz Ziemi Cieszynskiej that caused ceasing the works on Stonawa cokery, hunger strikes and in February 1988 a manifestation during Havel's first night performance of "Protest" and "Audience" in Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw.

The most spectacular event is undoubtedly the international seminar "Central Europe Culture Perplexed, Between Totalitarianism and Commercialism" that took place between 3rd and 5th of November 1989 in Wroclaw. It was patronized by Timothy Garton Ash, professor Jan Błoński, professor Czesław Hernas, professor Frantisek Janouch, Adam Michnik, Jiri Pelikan, dr Vilem Precan, prince Karl Johan von Schwarzenberg, Jan Józef Szczepański and Juliusz Żuławski.



Along with the seminar there was Independent Czechoslovak Culture Survey. There were some singers from Czechoslovakia and Czech immigration; among others Karel Kryl and Jaroslav Hutka. Some "Czech New Wave" films were presented. Unfortunately, presentation of Czech alternative theatres and art exhibition did not take place. Artists and their works were stopped on the border together with many Czechs and Slovaks wanting to come to the seminar and festival. Despite numerous difficulties several thousands of them finally managed to get to Wrocław.

Not even two weeks after Michnik's final speech in hoped to meet again in free Praque, the "Velvet Revolution" began, the process of democratic changes in Czechoslovakia.



In the new political reality the PCSS change it's ways of activism. PCSS initiated a meeting of President Vaclav Havel and "Solidarity" leader Lech Wałęsa that took place on l7th of March. According to PCSS' tradition the meeting was held in the mountains, but for this time in comfortable tourists' hut on Okraj Pass.

In April 1990 PCSS organized Czech Prime Minister Petr Pithart's visit in Southern Poland.



In 1991 the PCSS was officially registered under the title "Polish Czech-Slovak Solidarity Society". Its aim is cooperation among Poland, Czecho-Slovakia and other countries from Central-Eastern Europe concerning cultural, social and political life.

on the 8th and 9th of February 1992 the First Great PCSS Congress was held in Wrocław. There were established six branches and the Council of Spokesmen consisted of Mirosław Jasiński, Jerzy Kronhold, Warcisław Martynowski, Janusz Okrzesik and Jarosław Rybski.

A net of offices was created. Along with the Society a PCSS Foundation was established.

With the cooperation between the Society and PCSS Foundation there are some annual festivals in Cieszyn and Polish-Czech Days of Christian Culture held on Ziemia Kłodzka.

The Polish Czech-Slovak Solidarity propagates the principles of tolerance and mutual respect among other societies, cooperate with other organizations based on similar principles.

[pjotr]

The Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Persecuted

(Výbor na obranu nespravedlivě stíhaných – VONS)

The committee was founded on April 27, 1978, by a group of Charter 77 signatories with the aim of following cases of persons facing various forms of state persecution, from police harassment to unjust prosecution in courts of law.

Its members helped individuals facing persecution with obtaining legal representation and acted as mediators in acquiring assistance of a financial or other nature. Observing legal formalities, they addressed their communiqués to the Czechoslovak authorities, calling on them to take steps to rectify injustices perpetrated against individuals in the cases monitored. They also passed reports on the cases monitored to entities and persons abroad, from where this information was reported back to Czechoslovakia via the radio stations Radio Free Europe, Voice of America and the BBC. A number of VONS members were persecuted by the police and justice system for their activities, the most well known case being the legal process against five of its members in 1979. The vast majority of VONS communiqués were published in the samizdat bulletin Informace o Chartě 77 (Information on Charter 77). The Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Persecuted was also active after November 1989, when it focused on amending the criminal code, calming the stormy situations in the prisons at the time, as well as, for example, on preparing a general amnesty and rehabilitation laws. Members of VONS also made efforts to purge the judiciary, but with minimal success. At their meeting of July 3, 1996, VONS members decided to suspend the activities of the committee for an indefinite period.

Members of VONS

The 44 members of the Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Persecuted are listed in alphabetical order. The number in brackets after each name and surname refers to the date that the membership of the given person was made public in the corresponding VONS communiqué.

Founding members also included Alfréd Kocáb (his membership was never made public), Jakub Trojan (his membership was made public on March 6, 1979) and Jaroslav Suk (his membership remained undisclosed until he went into exile on February 26, 1981).

Until June 19, 1979, Ervín Motl was also on record as a member of VONS, but this was not in fact the case and was later disclaimed by the person in question (originally he had been listed as a member on the suggestion of Rudolf Battěk). The VONS Summary Communiqué No. 195 of August 3, 1980, also lists Svatopluk Karásek, who was at that time already in exile, as a member of VONS; this was not actually the case. The same is true of Petr Brodský, who is listed as a VONS member in the Summary Communiqué No. 713 of December 10, 1987.

During the 1990s several VONS members gradually suspended or terminated their activities, among them Petr Uhl (he suspended his membership on March 15, 1992; he left the committee on March 24, 1993), Anna Šabatová, Lenka Marečková and Jakub Trojan. Milan Hulík and Jiří Gruntorád, on the other hand, became members after 1989. Since June 3, 1996, when the last meeting of members was held, all activities of VONS have been suspended.

www.vons.cz/members

[pjotr]

The Polish-Czech-Slovak Solidarity Foundation
Public benefit organisation



00-031 Warsaw, Szpitalna 5/5 street,
tel. [phone] w. 141, 826 35 98, fax [phone],
E-mail: [e-mail], [e-mail]

The Polish-Czech-Slovak Solidarity Foundation was established in 1990 by J. Broda, Z. Janas, M. Jasiński and M. Piotrowski "Ducina." The goal of the Foundation is to conduct activities within the scope of education and culture, academic, educational, cultural, related to sport and physical education, protection of natural environment, charity, as well as those related to social assistance, for the benefit of cooperation, understanding and solidarity among the Polish, Czech and Slovak peoples as well as other peoples of other countries. Historically, the Foundation is an outgrowth of Polish-Czechoslovak Solidarity - a forum for cooperation of the democratic opposition of these countries established in the 1980's. Following the collapse of communism, the founders of Polish-Czechoslovak Solidarity agreed to continue activity establishing the Foundation and the Polish-Czech-Slovak Solidarity Association.

Currently, the Foundation focuses on assistance programs for organizations and media in countries of the former Soviet Union.