Czech Police Again Attack Activists Honoring Student’s 1969 Suicide

Hundreds of police, backed by water cannon and tear gas, charged into a public square for a second day Monday and scattered thousands of demonstrators on the 20th anniversary of the suicide of a 20-year-old dissident student.

The police apparently attacked when a group of activists tried for a second time to place flowers at the site in Wenceslas Square where dissident Jan Palach set himself on fire in 1969 to protest the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Dazed and surprised demonstrators scattered as police water cannon and paddy wagons roared into the square, bringing hundreds of riot police. A police officer speaking through a bullhorn ordered that the square be cleared and when, some refused to leave, the officers fired tear gas and charged.

There were no immediate reports of injuries, but a human rights activist said it was believed several arrests were made.

The incident occurred a day after police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse thousands of demonstrators who gathered in Wenceslas Square to mark Palach’s death. Polish Television said that more than 90 people were arrested in Sunday’s demonstration, and activists said that about 20 organizers of the memorial service were detained before the ceremony.

Palach, his clothes soaked with gasoline, set himself ablaze in the square Jan. 16, 1969, shocking the nation out of its growing apathy under Soviet occupation. When he died a few days later, half a million people attended his funeral.

The youth’s suicide prompted demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of Czechoslovaks outraged by their government’s cooperation with the Soviet occupiers, whose tanks crushed the “Prague Spring” of reforms led by Alexander Dubcek in August, 1968.

The attack by police Monday came when 16 people who had been briefly detained after Sunday’s demonstration tried for a second time to place flowers in the square.

Police in marked and unmarked cars drove back and forth across the vast, nearly mile-long square as a crowd watched.