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Current AffairsDreaded Communist-era StB secret police dissolved 15 years ago this week
Tuesday was the 15th anniversary of dissolution of the dreaded
Communist-era secret police, the Statni bezpecnost, or StB. Formed in
1948, the StB's darkest period was the 1950s, when they were notorious for
the cruelty of their interrogations. They kept tens of thousands of Czech
and Slovaks under surveillance, and in the 1980s employed around 75,000
informers. I spoke to former Senator and presidential candidate Jaroslava
Moserova, whose father was kept in solitary confinement by the StB for 12
long months.
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Current AffairsCzech commission to UNESCO urges city planners to respect character of historic centre
Just a few days ago the Czech commission to UNESCO chaired by Senator
Jaroslava Moserova issued an appeal to the Culture Ministry and Prague's
Town Hall to do their utmost to preserve the character of Prague's
historic city centre. The appeal came on the heels of several experts'
assessments that if certain controversial projects were realised, it might
lead to Prague's being struck off UNESCO's list of world heritage sites.
The Czech capital has been included on the list since 1992 - is there any
real weight to the threat it might be struck off in the future?
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Current Affairs"Comrades, it's not a fact, it really happened!" - a new project maps the absurdities of Communist Czechoslovakia
"Comrades, it's not a fact, it really happened!" - that is just
one of many absurd phrases recalled from the days of Czechoslovakia's
Communist regime: nonsensical decrees, statements, slogans, and citations
that reveal the absurdity, ineptness, and general intellectual decline of
the period. Elements now recalled in a new project launched by Senator
Jaroslava Moserova in conjunction with the Foundation of Czech National
Museums and Galleries, striving to save such relics before it's too late.
According to Senator Moserova: those who remember are only getting older
and dying out, and clearly there is an urgency for proof of the
absurdities of Communism to be complied and retained while there's still
time. But, the motivation is manifold: since 1989 institutions in the
Czech Republic mapped the crimes of Communism but missed the tragi-comic
aspect of the regime - absurdities that would have caused those who
despised the regime to snicker under their breath, to laugh behind closed
doors, but also to weep.
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Current AffairsJaroslava Moserova - reaction to the death of Zdenek Adamec
The death of nineteen-year old Zdenek Adamec - who set himself alight on
Prague's Wenceslas Square on Thursday - has shocked Czech society. Among
the first to react to the incident were the country's politicians, among
them senator Jaroslava Moserova. Mrs Moserova is a burns specialist, and
she was the first doctor to treat Jan Palach, the Czech student who set
himself alight on Wenceslas Square in 1969 to protest against what he said
was widespread apathy in Czechoslovak society following the 1968 Soviet
invasion.
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One on OneJaroslava Moserova - political David who stood against two Goliaths
Three weeks ago few people in this country knew much about Jaroslava
Moserova. Some perhaps would have known her as a former ambassador and
senator for the tiny Civic Democratic Alliance. Others would have seen her
name inside their favourite Dick Francis book - she's translated almost
four dozen of his detective stories into Czech. And then others still
would know her as the burns specialist who was the first doctor to treat
Jan Palach, the Czech student who set himself alight on Wenceslas Square
in 1969. Today, however, she's known as the woman who stood against two
political giants in the Czech presidential elections, and - surprisingly -
eliminated one of them in the first round. When I visited Jaroslava
Moserova this week in the Senate, I asked her if sudden fame had changed
her life.
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WitnessJaroslava Moserova - remembering Jan Palach
Jaroslava Moserova is one of the most widely respected Senators in the
Czech parliament, and has even been spoken of as a possible successor to
President Havel. But her memory for this week's Witness goes back to her
previous career as a doctor and burns expert at the plastic surgery clinic
of the Charles University Faculty Hospital here in Prague. She was on duty
when, on the 16th January 1969, the twenty-year-old Jan Palach was rushed
into the clinic with third degree burns. He had doused himself with petrol
and set himself alight on Wenceslas Square, a desperate protest against
the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia five months earlier. Jan Palach
died three days later, 34 years ago last Sunday, but around the world his
name remained a symbol of the tragedy of the occupation.
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