Freedom Festival 1999: In the Name of Freedoom
Eva Zaoralová, Program Director
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
This January, our country commemorated the 30th anniversary of the death
of Jan Palach. On the 16th of January 1969 at about 2:30pm, Jan Palach,
a student at the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University, covered
himself with petrol and set himself alight on Wenceslas Square in
Prague. Although people tried to extinguish the fire, the young man died
a few days later. He left behind him a declaration in which he explained
that his self-immolation was a protest against the Soviet occupation of
Czechoslovakia.
As is well known, tanks from the Warsaw Pact armies arrived in the
country on the 21st of August 1968 to suppress the reform movement and
tighten the grip on the Communist regime which had become more relaxed
during the universally recognised “Prague Spring.”
Jan Palach had hoped to force the public out of a passivity which had
gradually overcome it after the defeat of attempts to re-introduce
principles of democracy and free press. For an action such as this, he
could not choose anything more effective than the drastic gesture of
self-immolation. People were appalled. They were shaken and shocked at
this incredible act; for many it was incomprehensible. Judging by the
letter he left, the conversations he had with doctors and journalists
before he died, and from the testimony of his family, friends and
professors, it was clear that this was not a gesture undertaken by a
psychopath but the premeditated action of a person intent on sacrificing
his life in the name of honour, justice and freedom. Jan Palach’s
funeral became a huge nationwide demonstration and the police, at that
time firmly governed by the new company of “orthodox” officials from the
Czechoslovak Communist Party, could only look on speechless at the
dignified mourning of the silent crowds walking through the streets of
Prague behind Palach’s coffin.
Palach’s protest, at least for a time, did have its effect. People seemed
to be ashamed of the lethargy with which they were afflicted; they
appeared to straighten their crooked backs and reached deep inside
themselves for any remnants of courage to fight back before all
resistance was finally quelled by persecution and fear for their
existence. Jan Palach’s example inspired others, student Jan Zajíc and
technician Evzen Plocek. The new, so-called normalisation regime,
however, had learned to be more careful and did not allow any more human
torches to incite the nation to protest. The remains of Jan Palach,
whose grave in a Prague cemetery was visited daily by people bearing
flowers, were secretly transferred outside Prague.
Two decades later, in January 1989, what became known as the Palach Week
signified a substantial step toward change within the totalitarian
regime. Mass protests on Wenceslas Square at the site where Jan Palach
had set fire to himself lasted from the 15th to the 19th of January.
While, in the press, at that time fully censored, the daily demonstrations
were characterised as "a futile attempt at provocation," they in fact
required the presence of more than 2,000 policemen and thousands of
militiamen. At that time I lived not far from the place where Jan Palach
burned himself to death and every day I had to prove to the police
cordon around the empty Wenceslas Square that I actually lived there,
just so I could get home.
When the thousands of policemen managed to break up the demonstrations,
the Politbureau thought they would be able to deal with any similar
situation in the future. November 1989 proved that the Communist Party
chiefs had underestimated how events would develop.
People who came this January to honour the memory of Jan Palach were not
disturbed by any disciplinary forces. Flowers were laid by President of
the Republic Václav Havel, the Prime Minister and other politicians at
the site where Palach had carried out his act of protest. Even so, at
that moment, yet another youth demonstration, this time against some of
the policies of the new democratic government, was in progress a few
hundred metres away.
A number of people were incensed at this
defamation of such a significant anniversary, this expression of lost
historical memory. It may be, however, that somewhere up in heaven, Jan
Palach, seeing these young people who have grown up in a completely
different era and have never known subjugation, said to himself that he
didn’t die in vain. In his integrity and strictness, he probably
wouldn’t have supported all the ways that this generation chooses to
enjoy its freedom. Where the idea of freedom itself is concerned,
however, that is another matter altogether.
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