TURMOIL IN THE EAST BLOC : Czech Secret Police Shut Down
Prime Minister Marian Calfa said Tuesday that all domestic operations of the dreaded secret police have been halted.
“It is one of our priorities to adjust the work of the Interior Ministry to the new social conditions,” Calfa told Parliament.
In 41 years of Communist rule, secret police agents were involved in continuous surveillance operations against citizens and were responsible for the interrogation and harassment of dissidents and independent thinkers.
Opposition leader Vaclav Havel, once a dissident playwright and now the leading contender for president, has cited the constant threat of a house search. He also said that every visitor to his home was photographed and every conversation bugged.
Havel’s house in downtown Prague was continuously monitored from a nearby tower, and cameras were installed by the secret police in other streets where dissidents lived.
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