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Current Affairs15 years on: the East German exodus recalled
It may seem hard to believe but it is fifteen years since the world
witnessed the dramatic days of social upheaval and protest that eventually
led to the fall of Communism in Europe. At the time reform movements in the
Soviet satellites were given a new impetus by the Soviet Union's last
leader Mikhail Gorbachev who announced "Life punishes those who come
too late". The scenes in Berlin in November 1989 are vividly
remembered, but we sometimes forget one of the last episodes just before
those heady days - in the autumn of that same year thousands of East
Germans determined not to wait another minute, found a rather
unconventional way of leaving, to seek asylum in the West.
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Current AffairsRemembering the Soviet invasion - 36 years later
Over a hundred people gathered in front of the Czech Radio building on
Saturday to commemorate the anniversary of the Soviet-led invasion of
Czechoslovakia in 1968. Vinohradska Street, where Czech Radio is situated,
was one of the places that saw the biggest clashes between occupying
Warsaw Pact troops and Czech demonstrators, and therefore is a venue where
eyewitnesses and public personalities recall these events every year on
the 21st August - the day Czechoslovakia was occupied.
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Current AffairsFormer Czech dissidents on Ronald Reagan's role in bringing down communism
June 12, 1987: The President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, speaks in
front of the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin: "General-Secretary
Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr
Gorbachev, open this gate... Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
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Witness Jiri Dienstbier - life as a Czech Radio foreign correspondent in the mid-60s
Jiri Dienstbier has quite a curriculum vitae. He went from being a
political prisoner and then a stoker under the communists to Czechoslovak
foreign minister after the revolution. Then from 1997 to 2001 he was
United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in Jugoslavia. But Jiri
Dienstbier's original profession was journalism, and - in the 1960s - he
worked as a foreign correspondent for Czech Radio. Even that was a sign of
the easing of the restrictions which ended with the Prague Spring of 1968,
he says; in the 50s the Czechoslovak media simply repeated what they were
given by Soviet press agency.
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One on One Jiri Dienstbier - from prisoner to foreign minister
After years as a dissident, Jiri Dienstbier's life changed overnight during
the 1989 Velvet Revolution when he became the foreign minister of
Czechoslovakia. He was later appointed United Nations special rapporteur
for human rights in the former Yugoslavia, and was opposed to the NATO
bombing of Serbia and Kosovo. When I spoke to Jiri Dienstbier at his
Prague flat, our conversation was wide-ranging.
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