Czech State sides with Neo-Nazis:
Czech Anti-Fascists on Trial (96-01)
Prague Squats underAttack (95-00)
Report from the 7th annual East-West Anarchist Meeting (Sep 98)
Czech Environmental Demonstration Turns Violent (May 98)
Czechoslovak Anarchist Federation splits (97)
Riot Police attack Demonstration against Police Violence (97)
VIIth congress of Anarcho-syndicalist Faction (ASF-IWA)
Activities of the Czechoslovak Anarchist Federation (97)
Zapatista Conference held in Prague (97)
Police again harass Czech Anarchist (97)
PRAGUE, Czech Republic (May 17, 1998 5:03 p.m. EDT) -- A protest through Prague by environmental activists turned violent, injuring 22 police called in to disperse the crowd, officials said Sunday.
Police detained 64 people after officers wielding clubs tried to break up a crowd of about 2,000 stone-throwing youths Saturday, police spokeswoman Eva Brozova said. A police car was overturned and two fast-food restaurants were damaged.
The crowd moved through Prague in what organizers called "Global Street Party 98," protesting the impact multinational corporations have on the environment.
"Stones were landing among our guests, but fortunately, nobody was injured," the CTK news agency quoted Marek Kubec, an employee in one of the damaged restaurants, as saying. "But broken glass was everywhere."
Interior Minister Cyril Svoboda told Czech television Sunday that the demonstration was authorized by officials who only expected about 250 people to attend.
The protest was organized by the Czechoslovak Anarchist Federation and members of the radical U.S.-based environmental group Earth First, CTK reported. Some other environmental groups condemned the violent protest. "We are deeply sorry that this action was labeled as environmental," said Vaclav Vasku, spokesman for Greenpeace's Czech branch.
Brozova said 24 of the demonstrators face charges of hooliganism and attacking a public official. Thirty-five of those detained were released by Sunday, and five were foreigners who were handed over to another police division.
Copyright 1998 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Addresses:
FSA, PO Box 5, 15006 Praha 56, Czech Republic, fsa-praha@usa.net
CSAF, PO Box 587, 17001 Praha 7, Czech Republic
CSAF, PO Box 169, 79640 Prostejov, Czech Republic
In the middle of March Prague group of CAF opened a small "CAF-tearoom" in the suburbs of Prague. Although the room is not the property of the federation, they are allowed by the owner (relative of one of our member) to use it for our purposes. They hold every Tuesday anarchist meetings and every Friday the tearoom is opened from 16.00 to 22.00. If you are coming to Prague, do not forget to visit the anarchist tearoom! (contact CAF in advance by E-mail or phone).
The 9th issue of CAF's magazine "Svobodna mysl", was released the 13th of March, together with the first issue of a new regular monthly newsletter "Svobodna Mysl - zpravodaj". CAF also published booklet containing the principles of the federation, CAF Programme Manifesto, diary of CAF actions 1995-1997 and also principal documents of IAF/IFA.
The 10th issue of "Svobodna mysl" was released July 14th. With 62 pages A4 it is a biggest issue ever produced. It includes for instance first part of Czech translation of "Social anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism" by Murray Bookchin, long article about MayDays Barcelona 1937 and a lot of interesting articles mainly concerning politics, economics and internal discussions within Czech anarchist movement.
The moravian branch of the CAF - autonomous group "Prerovsko", published the very first Czech edition of revolutionary comics about Buonaventura Durruti in a new booklet.
The Prostejov autonomous group started to print the "Anarchy" - essay by Malatesta, also appearing for the very first time in Czech.
After two years of collecting money, the Prague group of CAF, together with the group of their magazine "Svobodna Mysl", succesfully raised 10.000 CZK to buy a computer scanner, which will help them a lot in their publishing.
In the end of July three anarchists from Prague CSAF group made a propagation tour to Slovakia. They report that Slovakian anarchist movement is revived and after several years of stagnation, there are very clear sings of reestablishing of movement of social anarchism. In "Podlysec" community there had been a meeting of approx. 30 Slovakian anarchists, who gathered to organise themselves. Three CSAF members were present and after several hours of discussions it seems, that either Slovakian anarchists will create SAF - Slovakian Anarchist Federation, which could be than confederated with CSAF, or they will join collectively the CSAF, which has got nowadays already two autonomous groups in Slovakia (Bratislava and Košice). There will be further discussions in September, when CSAF will probably merge with Slovakian groups.
CSAF is still growing and have new and quickly developing autonomous group in Western Bohemia, which will be hopefully soon transformed into the Western Bohemia "region" of CSAF.
On the 29th of March, the Moravian regional groups of CAF organised a direct action against proposed governmental neo-liberalist actions in railway system, including shutting down of 30% local train connections (of course in favour of car transport) and 100% raising of prices. 50 anarchists invaded in the Brno main station the international express via Slovakia (of course without valid tickets) and have shown a large slogan banners like "Railway for people", "Solidarity with railway workers" and three black and red flags. Anarchists then distributed large number of leaflets among passengers. The express crew sympathised with this action and did not demand tickets. Although the police was present, no action was made against the anarchists. The CAF "Black ride" was widely commented in the media. In the town of Olomouc, after 50 km, Moravian CAF members left the train without problems.
DEMONSTRATION AGAINST VISIT OF THE POPE
On the 24th of April, a group of 30-40 members of Prague CAF demonstrated on one of the main squares in Prague against the visit of the Pope. They distributed several hundreds of leaflets, based upon a famous Andre Breton surrealist manifesto describing burning churches during the anarchist uprisings in Spain. The rally through the City was forbidden by the local authority and some 100 heavilly armed riot-police pigs were present. A group of anarchists with red-and-black flags had been giving interviews to numerous journalists, and after some 30 minutes the organizers ended the meeting, because it would have been useless to get jailed after skirmish with riot police. (Especially as the CAF congress started the next day.)
The visit of the Pope is closely interconnected with efforts of catholic clergy to get back "their" real estates, forrests, fields, and other property, confiscated after 1945 during the liberal socialist 2nd republic and after 1948 - communist coup d'etat. The CAF are alarmed by the fact, that proposed government "compensation" should also include majority of property confiscated in 1918 by the Masaryk government. Government issued a statement, that they want to "give back" to the catholic church nearly 1000 buildings, several hundred thousands hectars of forrest and fields and lot of small factories and workshops... together more than 50 Billion CZK (approx. 2 Billion USD) These restitutions also includes all catholic orders, including catholic "Order of the German Knights" , well known for collaboration with Nazis during World War II, when Czechoslovakia was occupied by Nazi Germany. This order would possess an enormous economic power in Northern Moravia, with several castles, tens of thousands hectars of forrest, tens of thousands of fields and many buildings and even several factories.
The Catholic Church has already several times proved it's real character regarding the capitalist and church restitutions - last shining example of the criminal character of the catholic clergy is the forced eviction of the Educational Institute for blind children, which was doing great work for long years in one building, that was "returned" to the Catholic church. In the building is nowadays a much more "important" school - the "seminar" - school for priests...
MAY DAY DEMONSTRATION IN PRAGUE AND OLOMOUC
May Day demonstrations organised by CSAF were held in Prague and Moravian capital Olomouc. In Prague some 150 people attended. This is much less than in 1996, because the whole "anarcho-autonomous" movement ignored the demonstration and organised a football tournament instead of taking part... There was a rally through the Prague with black & red flags, and a the slogan banner "We fight for social justice in classless society !". There were a few skirmishes with riot police after the demo, but nobody was arrested. The Olomouc action was very simmilar, with more than 100 people attending.
Prague group of CSAF had sticked hundreds of leaflets in Prague inviting workers to attend the demonstration against Capitalism and planned government neoliberalist actions. The leaflets were intensively commented in the press and radio broadcast for their radicalism and "ultraleftist" style.
CSAF will start a large scale campaign against the government neo-liberalist attack on social rights. This year it is very important to protest against social injustice and oppression, because the government is preparing a set of terrible neo-liberalist actions. They want to de-regulate housing prices. It means 100% raising this year, 200% next year and again 200% in 1999. They want to raise prices of electricity by 67%, the prices of train by 100%, the prices of telecommunication by 100%, mail by 150%. They want to introduce a school fee on universities - 15.000 CZK per annum. They want to dissolve the usual retirement system and nearly completely withdraw the state support of retirement. All people would be forced to pay additional enormous sums to special "retirement insurance funds"... The Czech anarchist movement will mobilise against these actions, because the approving of the housing bill would in fact make tens of thousands people homeless. A lot of foreign banks started intensive buying of private and state owned block of flats on a mass scale and there are clear signals, that the new housing prices ("only" 100% raising is in state owned flats, the private owned sector would be totally deregulated...) people simly cannot pay. (the price for one month in privately owned 3 rooms flat - today approx. 2000 CZK woud raise to 8.000 - 10.000 CZK - the average salary is 9.000 CZK)
On March 4th the final session of the High Court regarding Petr's lawsuit, turned into another Orwell-like comedy. The sentence of City Court, forcing the Police to apologize publicly in medias and pay 150,000 CZK to Petr, was dismissed, because High Court said, that Police is no legal subject and Petr should start the completely new lawsuit against Minister of Interior... This is a clear attempt to postpone the inevitable conclusion of this lawsuit. Peter started the lawsuit in late 1993 and with these prospects he can await the final conclusion to be made nor earlier than in 1999-2000...
MOST IMPORTANT ACTIONS OF THE ANARCHISTS
In dec'94 the Czech anarchists organized some smaller actions against the Chechnia-war. Very important was the anti-fascist work, The rightist radicals became more and more active in Czechia and Slovakia they attack the Roma (an name of gypsies) and anarchists, and make pogroms etc. Within 5 years they killed 14 persons. In august '94 the anarchist Z. Cepel was killed by fascists, which recalled vehement protest actions . On 27 august in Tannwald demonstrated a 200 anarchists and 50 Roma. On 28 august the anarchists attacked in Praha a demo of the pro-fascist "Republican Party"; the police in defending the fascists got a stone rain, some police men were injured. In 1995 occurred for the first time since 1992 again a radical I at of May demonstration. That anarchist action brought together a 400 persons. At first the anarcho-syndicalists spoke about 4he struggle against IMF, against NATO and against EU. Than the demonstration participants marched through Praha. On that way punks demolished shopwindows of Mc Donald's. Some times there were clashes wit the police, the police chain was run through and at that moment the people were screaming "On the Bastille" (famous historic place in Paris). Possibly 2 policemen and 5 autonomen were injured. Some participants were arrested, but got the next day freedom. The demo was showed on TV.
THE REPRESSION
After the action against the "Republicans" in oct'94 the police put a charge against the anarchist Vaclav Jez, because of the obvious attempts of a bomb throwing. An investigation handling was begun. The other charge point was the military service refusal. On 21 April V. Jez organized a smaller anti-militaristic demo in Blanska in Moravia, it became brutally dissolved by the police. Some people were flogged (maltreated) and V. Jez had been charged for "attacks on the police". He arrested on the I st. of May during the demo in Praha and had to pass 4 months in prison. Nowadays he is free again, but the investigation goes on.
ANARCHO- SYNDICALIST ACTIVITIES
The A.S.Fed (ASF) arose in may '94 out of the A.S.Initiative(ASI). It wants
at the next IWA conference in 1996 to apply for membership of that International.
It already had 3 congresses (Oct'94, Jan., April '95), at which members discussed
about the organizational and programmatical questions, financial problems and
publication plans. Nowadays ASF has about 20 members, in 10 towns and places
are groups.
It works mainly as a propaganda Organization and it publishes the small magazine
'Syndikalista' (already 5 numbers, 2-3 monthly, pintrun 100, irregular local
publications are "Sabotaz" ,"Bufic", etc., as well as leaflets and brochures).
The ASF activists visit regularly anarchist and trade-union actions at which
they call for syndicalism, for independent selforganization and for general
strike. In august '95 the ASF organized a demo in front of the US-embassy in
favor of Abu Jamal (ca 20 participants).
The Czech anarcho-syndicalists talked already since a longer period about the
possibilities of an own union work. In July '95 at last in Praha took place
an establishing congress of the initiative "Independent Radical union-Solidarity"
(NRO-S) Today the registration procedure runs. The Organization structure is
at maximum decentralized. The NRO-S is based on syndicalist principles of direct
action and anti-parlamentarianism. Formally it remains neutral, it is to say:
for example, it is open for anti-authofitarian Marxists.
ANARCHIST MOVEMENT IN SLOVAKIA
The social economical and political situation in Slovakia is a lot less stabile as in the Czech rep. The number of jobless is higher , the political power is unstable, the national problems are more acute. In spite of some strikes the trade-union movement remains less active. In 1994 some groups tried to form an anarchist federation, this existed for only 10 months and dissolved on 22 Oct '94 at their 3rd congress. There is no joint national anarchist magazine. In 1994 appeared the only issue of the magazine "Revolta", with a printrun of 1000; but the publication ceased due to lack of money. The Anarchist Association that made that magazine split up on 11 - 11 '94. Partly the activists do not call themselves anymore anarchists, but a "Free Alterative" (symphatisants of individual freedom) and engaged themselves with mainly pacifist and anti-fascist themes. Others consider themselves still as anarchists, but have no possibilities to publish a magazine. There are isolated anarchist groups with their local publications, some still make also a joint bulletin called "Free Mutual Aid" (there one may find information about actions and repression). Some Slovak anarcho-syndicalists in 2 towns do call themselves Anarcho-Syndicalist Propaganda Cells" and work in tight contact wit the Czech ASF.
(Source: Info of ASF sept'95, "Syndikalista"nr 2,4,5, "Sabotaz" nr 2. "Svobodiia Misl" nr 3, "A-Kontra" 1995 nr 1/2,3/4,5/70.)
- from Summer 1995 A-S Info, Bulletin of Anarchism & Syndicalism in Eastern and Central Europe, produced by friends of the International Workers Association
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