Stanislav Devátý

“In the middle of this street there was one other street leading left at right angles, that’s where Vašek Malý lived at the time. So we asked the diplomat to take us to Vašek Malý. We got out there and the diplomat drove off. But State Security didn’t know about us. We visited Vašek and were with him for about five minutes when State Security came to get him. They took him away, but they still didn’t know about us. We were invited to the reception at eight o’clock, and when the time approached, we walked out on to the street. The embassy was in the middle of the street, about 50 to 100 metres from us. We came out and walked slowly towards the house. They must have been watching us from both sides because suddenly several people from either side broke into a run to try to catch us. Of course, we also started running. At the time Anička Šabatová, Petr Uhl’s wife, was also going with us to the embassy. We rushed up to the embassy and Petr managed to ring the bell. They [the embassy employees] opened the door, so Petr entered and they couldn’t get at him, because he was on British soil. But they caught Anička Šabatová, I was already in the gateway, but Anička was about five metres behind me. They caught me in the gateway, and some three of them started dragging me away from the gate. I saw they had Anička and that they were pulling her away, so I asked Petr what I should do. He just said: ‘Leave her, she’s got children, they’ll have to release her.’ So I shook the policemen off of me and onto the ground and I entered the embassy, which the police were banned from entering. All of the participants of the reception, including the permanent secretary of foreign affairs of Great Britain, saw this happen with their own eyes. It was the first time they had witnessed how State Security actually worked. So on the basis of this experience that very night the foreign secretary of Great Britain lodged a complaint directly to Husák himself.”

“On the twenty-first of August 1968 we were in the little town of Siřem. That was basically a village on the border with East Germany. So we experienced the occupation already overnight. Already around ten eleven in the evening we heard pounding and then the news that we’d been occupied. At the same time we saw a Russian tank column occupy our little village. That year 1968 had quite an impact on me. I was also influenced by the fact that a number of people, including our teachers, but also our older schoolmates, many of which had protested against the occupation, switched sides two years later and began collaborating. Which had more of an opposite effect on my generation, that is on me and my friends, people I kept in touch with.”

“When they took me to the police station, the local Zlín chief of State Security said that what I was doing was not good. He also informed me that if I would be the Charter’s spokesman, that I’d be in for pretty ride. And I was surprised what Charter spokesman... Those security officers knew about it sooner than I did! That was really interesting. Then Ivan Lamper came from Prague to Zlín and confirmed that I had been suggested as the first non-Prague spokesman for Charter 77. The other spokesmen together with me were Bohumír Janát, who was there for the Catholic circles, and Miloš Hájek, who represented the Communists expelled after 1968.”