Abstract
In March this year the relatives of five well-known Czech political prisoners wrote to President of the Republic and Communist Party leader, Gustdv Husák, appealing for their release and complaining of ‘the inhumane and illegal conditions’ to which they were subjected.
The letter was signed by the parents of student leader Jiří Müller, the wife and children of Ing. A. Rusek, the wife and children of Dr Jaroslav Ŝabata, and the wives of Dr Milan Hübl and Dr Jan Tesaŕ. It was sent together with a detailed account of the prisoners' conditions, quoting extensively from their letters home and pointing out the many infringements of Czechoslovak laws and international human rights covenants committed by the prison authorities.
In this part of the appeal, entitled ‘Documentation’, the signatories show that political prisoners are given worse treatment and fewer privileges than common criminals, and that on various occasions the prison authorities do not abide even by their own regulations. They also point to the persecution of the prisoners' families, stating that their wives have repeatedly been dismissed from employment and can only hold menial jobs, white their children are not allowed to study at secondary schools and universities.
The existence of this appeal was made public abroad at press conferences held earlier this year in Paris, Vienna, Stockholm, Oslo and Dublin. Excerpts from the letter were published by a number of leading newspapers, including The Times, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Quotidien de Paris. In Czechoslovakia itself, despite the extraordinary security precautions taken during the XV Congress of the Communist Party in April, copies of the appeal were delivered to each of the delegates, 2,000 copies being distributed in Prague alone.
Below we print the complete text of the letter and an edited version of the ‘Documentation’, from which we have selected mainly excerpts from the prisoners' letters. We should like to thank the Palach Press for making this text, as well as Václav Havel's letter (see p. 55), available to us.