Do not allow oblivion
Stáhnout obrázek
Jiří Línek was born in Prague on 2 September 1948 as the youngest of three children. His father was a civil engineer and his mother a housewife. He graduated from the Libeň grammar school and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University. He experienced the thaw of the 1960s, cut short by the occupation of Czechoslovakia. Jiří Línek set out for the centre of Prague on 21 August 1968. He witnessed the occupation army firing weapons near the Czechoslovak Radio building and hid inside a house, and in Wenceslas Square he saw tanks being set on fire. He decided to leave the country immediately afterwards and left for Switzerland, but came back home one year later. He was arrested for taking part in a demonstration to mark the anniversary of the occupation in August 1969 and spent almost a month in prison in Pankrác; he was acquitted later. The StB would regularly inspect him for the next ten years to make sure he would not take part in any anti-regime activities. He worked in the field of computer and software development, and has owned a business in the industry since 1989. He has been the Chair of the Former Political Prisoners Association (Sdružení bývalých politických vězňů) since 2016.
