Riot Police Break Up Prague Demonstration

Hundreds of baton-wielding riot police today charged thousands of demonstrators who defied police bans today and rallied on the 21st anniversary of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.

“Freedom! Freedom!” yelled the crowd, and “Long Live Hungary!” The neighboring Communist country has embarked on the kind of political reforms Czechoslovakia’s entrenched leaders have rejected.

Helmeted police moved in to break up the rally in Wenceslas Square just 10 minutes after it started.

Protesters Detained

Their massive show of force prompted the crowd to flee. Witnesses said at least a dozen protesters were detained.

The rally began with what was to have been a silent march.

But the 2,000 marchers broke into loud applause and raised their hands in victory signs when a group of activists from neighboring Hungary unfurled a banner of support.

The banner, proclaiming “The Bolsheviks came with tanks. We come with flowers,” was immediately torn down by plainclothes police.

Many tourists were watching the demonstration on the square, and some of them applauded when shouts of “Freedom!” were heard.

Warsaw Pact tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia on Aug. 21, 1968, choking the “Prague spring” reforms of Alexander Dubcek, the Communist Party leader who was ousted in 1969 and expelled from the party in 1970. He is today a pensioner in Bratislava but has issued increasingly strong calls for reform to resume.

On Sunday, more than 30 young people were led to a police bus after trying to march in central Prague as they have every day since Aug. 1.

Dana Nemcova, one of the few well-known dissidents not warned by police to leave Prague for the anniversary, said plainclothes men came to her door before 7 a.m. and placed her and her activist son, David, under two-day house arrest.

Nemcova is a spokeswoman for the Charter 77 dissident group.

Plainclothes police were also guarding the home of Anna Sabatova and Petr Uhl, two well-known dissidents who have not been seen for two days. It was not known whether they had been detained.

Telephone Lines Cut

In their efforts to curb dissent leading up to the anniversary, authorities cut the telephone lines of at least four well-known dissidents and harassed several others.

In the last year, thousands of Czechoslovaks have signed petitions demanding dialogue with Communist authorities and reforms such as those in neighboring Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union.

But the Communist leaders who were put in power by Moscow after the 1968 invasion have so far refused to institute political change.