Stanislav Devátý

“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.”

“In 1984 we managed to publish in that very year a really splendidly bound edition of George Orwell’s 1984. We had been preparing it more than a year, about a year and a half, but it was really beautiful and in hardback. We did it for the anniversary, as a run of about 200 pieces. First we had it translated, that was done by Ivan Lamper’s brother, who came from Malenovice but was very active and had moved to Prague. His brother Jan was an English teacher, and he translated it. We prepared the whole book on copying foils, and we then did a silk-screen print run of 200 copies. And the book had about 400 pages, so you can imagine the amount of work it required.”

“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.”