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Labour Focus on Eastern Europe, Vol. 2 No. 5, November–December 1978, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
On 1 October as members of Charter 77 and the Polish KSS-KOR were meeting on the Czech-Polish frontier the political police of both countries arrested all those present. After 48 hours, while others were released, Dr Jaroslav Šabata, one of the three spokespersons for Charter 77, was kept in prison.
Dr Šabata was a member of the Communist Party’s Central Committee in 1968 and was one of the very few Party leaders who refused to accept the invasion and continued occupation of the country. As one of the most vigorous leaders of the socialist opposition he was arrested in 1971 and sent to prison for 6½ years. Thanks to the pressure of international labour movement protests he was released in 1976 after serving 5 years of his sentence. In the spring of this year he replaced Jiri Hajek as an official spokesperson of the Charter.
If Dr Šabata is put on trial he could be made to serve the remaining 18 months of his previous prison sentence as well as any new jail sentence that may be imposed. His arrest is evidently designed to be taken as an attack on the entire Charter movement, which has been increasingly active since Dr Šabata became one of the official leaders.
On 4 October, the Prague-based Committee to Defend Persons Unjustly Prosecuted issued a public statement providing full information about Šabata’s case. On 13 October, the Social Self-Defence Committee (KOR) issued an appeal in Warsaw on behalf of Dr Šabata. (This appeal is reproduced on page 2.)
The arrest of Dr Šabata has marked the culmination of a new campaign of repression by the political police. On 10 October Charter document No. 19, which answers in detail Premier Strougal’s claim that only political means are used against the Charter, pointed out the increasing number of prosecutions against Chartists. These include the following cases:
Jiri Chmel’s case is in one respect unprecedented. At a first trial the prosecution produced 4 witnesses to substantiate the allegations.. But at the trial all four declared that the political police had forced them to appear and that they did not know Mr. Chmel at all. The trial was then hurriedly adjourned. Two new prosecution witnesses were produced for the second trial but in court they also declared that they “had been manipulated by the STB” (the political police) and knew nothing about Mr. Chmel.
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Last updated: 15 February 2023