Dear Pres. Havel,
Stop the New Normalization*,
We Demand the Right to Protest
Open Letter to Václav Havel,
President of the Czech Republic
In November 1989, we won some
fundamental democratic rights, including the
right to free assembly and free expression of
political opinions. With the fall of the Iron
Curtain, we won the freedom to travel. With the
birth of the Czech Republic in 1993, The List of
Fundamental Rights and Freedoms became part of
the Constitution of the Czech Republic.
As in the 1970s and 1980s, our
rights are formally guaranteed. However in
practice they are trampled on because they depend
on the benevolence of bureaucrats. The local
authorities of the Prague districts 2 and 4 have
taken the decision to ban all protest marches
against the policies of the IMF and the World
Bank on the 26th September 2000. The reasons
given for the ban were bureaucratic
technicalities such as "it will limit the
traffic flow," which in our opinion is not a
just reason to deny us our fundamental,
constitutionally guaranteed rights. At the same
time we are disturbed by a so far one-off
incident on the 13th September 2000, when one
American and three Dutch opponents of
globalization were turned away at the Hrensko
border point because "they had anarchist
flags and stickers on the car" (Immigration
officer, daily paper MF Dnes 14/9/00).
We, the undersigned, demand
that our fundamental civil rights and freedoms
are respected. This means that everyone who wants
to cross the border and protest against the IMF
and World Bank Meeting in Prague should be
allowed to do so. We also demand the immediate
revocation of the ban on marches.
(*After the defeat of the 1968
movement in Czechoslovakia, the government
embarked on the policy of
"Normalization," bringing things back
to normal, i.e. under their tight control.)
Please fax this letter with
signatures to:
Office of the President of the
Czech Republic: 00420/2/24371111
Ministry of the Interior: 0042/2/61433560 or
0042/2/61433555
Ministry of Foreign Affaires: 0042/2/24182041
Please send copies to the organizers:
th_fr@gmx.net or fax 0042/2/6970395
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