Martin Kučera

"I wanted to become a member of the Commission of Inquiry into the Events of 17 November. I wanted to achieve the arrest of these people in red berets who looked like paratroopers. Who committed much more senseless violence than all the other police officers who were there. All the riot police were following orders, but these people were exemplarily violent. So I tried and I wanted to catch them. I didn't make it to the commission, but I was invited for questioning. I spent two hours there, but the commission didn't care much. At that time I was disappointed that the commission was not interested in the description of the person, how many people were there and what they were doing. They asked me about ordinary things that everyone knew at the time."

"Suddenly we saw armoured personnel carriers coming from behind and unrolling a kind of a better wire fence. And they, with more people with truncheons, pushed us into almost a square space where the Bar Association building is today, with that former arcade. In addition to people being pulled out of the crowd, there were these isolated incidents of very brutal violence. There were people in red berets, they looked like paratroopers, they had high laced boots, you could see that they were not ordinary soldiers. They pulled someone out of the crowd, four of them jumped on him and beat him so much that he was left lying down. They dragged him away by his legs. One of them stood up with his truncheon and his hands on his hips and asked who else wished to discuss. That way the euphoria turned into a feeling of absolute helplessness. After some time we found out that people were walking away through the arcade and that an aisle had been created. It looked like there was no choice but to run through it and get beaten up in the aisle anyway. So Roman, a friend, and I each ran through on our own and we got out."