Czech Police Break Up Crowd of 5,000 Chanting Calls for Freedom

Riot police, some armed with clubs and others with dogs on leashes, charged into a crowd of 5,000 people who chanted demands for freedom on the 70th anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia on Friday.

Hundreds of police officers raced into Wenceslas Square in central Prague, beating demonstrators with clubs while the dogs snarled and snapped. Other police fired water cannon and tear gas at the crowd.

Plainclothes officers kicked and twisted the limbs of demonstrators, who shouted back “Shame!”

The state news agency CTK said 87 people were arrested.

CTK said the disturbances only involved about 2,000 people but said they also spread to the nearby Old Town Square.

By early evening, police trucks had moved off Wenceslas Square into nearby side streets. There was a heavy presence of uniformed police throughout the city center.

Friday’s crowd defied a week of warnings from Czech authorities not to attend the rally called by the Charter 77 human rights organization and four other independent groups.

The rally followed what dissident sources described as the most extensive roundups of dissidents in recent years, in which at least 70 were detained.

Chants of “We want freedom!” and “Long live truth!” rose repeatedly from Friday’s crowd.

In the 20 years since 1968, when Soviet-led Warsaw Pact troops crushed the “Prague Spring” reform movement in Czechoslovakia, the country’s Communist Party has been hard on dissent but kept supplies of goods generous as a reward for political silence from most of the 15.5 million citizens.