Strojový, zatím neredigovaný přepis

Will I be on T.V? [1978]

Whose disgrace?

The following account was written by the
philosopher Ladislav Hejdánek, who became one
of the three spokesmen for Charter 77 after the
death of his one-time teacher, Professor Jan
Patočka, in March last year. It describes a form
of harassment that is widespread in
Czechoslovakia today – the temporary detainment
of people the regime considers dangerous whenever
a sensitive public event such as a political trial is
to take place.

Still playing the game of apparent legality,
however shoddily, the police disguise such
detainment as ‘ interrogation ³. According to the
Law Concerning the National Security Corps (i.e.
SNB, the uniformed police), you may be held for
questioning in three circumstances: to' explain' a
felony, to provide evidence as a witness, or as a
direct suspect. The law stipulates that for the first
two kinds of interrogation, you must be summoned in writing and told what felony is involved - in
other words, who is suspected and of what. Article
15 mentioned by Hejdánek concerns the first type
of interrogation.

Ladislav Hejdánek's account is dated 7 January
1978. A month later the leading Czech playwright
Pavel Kohout wrote a letter to the Czechoslovak
Prime Minister, Lubomír Štrougal, complaining
about the behaviour of the police on the evening
of 28 January, when they prevented a large
number of dissidents from attending the annual
Railwaymen's Ball in Prague. The playwright
Václav Havel, actor Pavel Landovsky, and
musician Jaroslav Kukal were arrested, and
Kohout himself knocked unconscious by a
policeman who hit him from behind as he was
leaving the premises. We print the full text of his
letter to Dr Štrougal.

Ladislav Hejdánek

Will I be on T.V?

It began as usual. At one p.m. on Friday – the
day the Supreme Court decision on Aleš Macháček
and Vladimír Laštuvka¹ was to be handed down
– the STB came to pick me up at work. 'Well, off
we go again, Mr Hejdánek. Of course you know
the routine by now.'

I asked the gentlemen to show me a written
summons, but they didn't have one. They said an
oral summons was enough and then rattled off a
formal command for me to appear, etc., according
to Article 19 of the Law concerning the National
Security Corps. I asked what it was about and they
said I'd find out soon enough. In other words, it
was an irregular summons. I had always appeared
before in response to written summonses. Why, I
asked, had they resorted to these extraordinary
and unlawful procedures? Moreover, I pointed out
that I worked until three-thirty, and since they had
never once recompensed me for the loss of pay
this incurred, though I had always requested it, I
told them I wouldn't leave before three-thirty. I
also wanted to telephone home, but they wouldn't
allow it.

When it was clear that they weren't to be put
off, I told them they could repeat the procedure
they had gone through with Mr Tomín,' if that
was what they wanted. And so they grabbed me,
pulled me along the corridor and down the stairs,

¹Aleš Macháček, an agricultural engineer, and
Vladimir Laštuvka, a nuclear physicist, were
sentenced to three and a half years in prison on
26-28 September 1977 on charges of 'subversion'
for possessing and distributing 'illegal literature',
including Charter 77. On 6 January this year, the
Czechoslovak Supreme Court confirmed the sentence
on Macháček, but reduced Laštuvka's by a year.

2 Julius Tomín, a philosopher and signatory of Charter
77, who was the first of the Chartists passively to
resist illegal arrest.

dragged me across the courtyard on my back, and
started shoving me rather roughly into the waiting
car.

It was here that I made my first mistake. I had
been determined not to utter a word, for what had
impressed me most about Tomín's comportment
was his silence. I wanted to see whether I was up
to it too. But to my shame I held out for only
about two minutes. Then I pointed out to the
puffing officers that I'd lost a shoe. They declared
that they couldn't care less, then pushed me into
the car. I was crestfallen - it was a question of
human freedom and dignity and here I was
worrying about my shoe. I resolved not to speak
another word.

The journey passed without incident. The officers
were breathing heavily and the clearly more
important one merely muttered darkly that if I so
much as budged I'd catch it. Hands on your knees
and not a move. I made no response.

In Bartolomějská Street, they ordered me out.
Again I did not respond. They cursed and
threatened and then, slightly more roughly this
time, hauled me out of the car, deliberately
bumping my head against the door. Still cursing,
they dragged me along the pavement, not by my
arms but by my sleeves, up the steps and into the
tiled building on my back. For the first time it was
genuinely painful. They propped me against the
porter's cabin, but the porter clearly didn't
approve. You brought it in here,' he said, 'so
you can clear it out of here too. The top brass
will be coming by in a moment.

So they dragged me off behind a partition and
one of them went to phone the comrades from his
department for help. A while later two more of
them arrived and all four cursed me (son-of-a-
bitch', 'cow' and other epithets from the animal
kingdom, and so this is the spokesman, the
national hero' and such like). They dragged me
into the lift, kicking me collectively as they went.
(I have to admit that on the whole they were gentle
kicks, with the exception of one blow to the spine,
which was more painful. Perhaps they were just
warming up.) On the second floor they pulled
me out of the lift and along the corridor into a
room, where they left me lying on the floor. One
of them tramped on my shoeless foot for good
measure, then reconsidered, turned my foot over
with his boot, and stamped on the arch (but
again, not particularly hard) with the words,
'Doesn't want to get up, does he? Naturally, I
remained lying down. Then they went away to
cool down, one staying behind with me.

An hour or so later they began to lose patience
and so at someone's suggestion, they opened the
window to try and speed things up. This provided
me with an opportunity (in this mutual experiment)
to ascertain that one's legs tremble from the cold
for only about a quarter of an hour, then the body
arranges things, even if the foot is shoeless. The
frigid atmosphere was occasionally broken by
interjections like: 'Still don't want to talk, Mr
Hejdánek? ' I said nothing. After a while they
opened the door as well, and a draft playfully
teased my hair. My legs began trembling again,
but this time I knew it was only a matter of time
before the wise body took care of it sua sponte.
There is nothing like bodily resources for avoiding
every act of violence; they are capable of handling
almost anything.

Or so I thought. About five o'clock my leg was
seized by a cramp, my back began to hurt
unbearably and my stomach was writhing with
pain (recently I've again been troubled by stomach
ulcers, so that I have to eat at least a little at
frequent intervals); to top it all I had to – if you'll
excuse mè- go to the toilet. There is nothing like
the bodily processes. Naturally I couldn't just get
up without a word and walk out: who knows, they
might have started shooting. And so I had to
speak.

I was given permission and an escort. I got to my
feet stiffly and hobbled out with great difficulty.
(Incidentally, just try walking, even without being
in a state of incipient hibernation, with one shoe
missing.)

When I returned, I alternated between pacing
about, standing behind a chair with my arms on
the back of it and, until they forbade me to do
so, ' sitting on the table, relieving my weight
with both arms. One rather polite young man
(who came in later and greeted me politely as I
was lying there, so that I regretted not responding
and apologised to him later) told me that I could
lie on the table as before if I wasn't able to sit. I
welcomed this suggestion and laid down. Later
someone else came in and said that he was going
to sit at the table and didn't want to have to stare
at my head so might I-if I wished-lie down on
the floor again?

I did so. And then it was now about seven in
the evening - he finally closed the window, leaving
only the ventilator open. About half an hour later
the door opened and in came a man who was the
only one to introduce himself to me - he called
himself Uhlíř – accompanied by another man with
a video camera. Uhlíř announced that he was
going to put a few questions to me and required
an explanation according to Article 15 of the Law
concerning the National Security Corps, and would
I stand up. I did, but remained leaning against the
back of the chair while he instructed me about the
contents of Article 15 and asked two questions
about what I knew of two leaflets he put before
me. It was the first time I had ever seen them,
so I said I knew nothing, that I had not read
them. I was instructed again about my duty to
tell them everything I might eventually find out
about the leaflets. All this was filmed. The
interrogator then asked me why I had refused to
go with the security officers voluntarily so that
they had to carry me. I replied that I had already
given my reasons at the time, and I repeated them
and made a correction - I wasn't carried but rather
dragged, on my back, through the courtyard,
through the streets, up and down stairs and
corridors, and was kicked in the process. The next
question: why did I cause so much trouble when
Charter 77 professes respect for the law? I replied
that it was constantly necessary to resort to new
forms of protest against ceaseless abuses of the
law. And finally, I was asked what people would
think when they saw what had just been filmed. I
retorted that I was being filmed without my
consent, which was just one more abuse of the law,
and that viewers would certainly draw their own
conclusions. Finally, I pointed out that I had only
one shoe and had no intention of leaving the place
in the freezing cold in my stockinged feet. They
left, and I again remained alone with one of them.
I lay down on the floor.

About an hour and a half later I was finally led
down the stairs (I could walk only with great
difficulty), put into an ancient car and taken
home. The jerking vehicle brought hellish pains
to my back. But what's a backache when human
freedom and dignity are at stake? And now it
seems they intend to show me on television as
part of a new defamation campaign - in my
work-clothes with the buttons torn off, with
dishevelled hair, tired and battered. Will the
disgrace be mine?

(Transl. Paul Wilson)