Things fall apart, the center cannot hold

Let no man deceive you with vain words

Swift March Back in the Czech Republic

By James V. Jakoubek

[Editor's note: Phone connections and email connections to dissident leader Petr Cibulka in the Czech Republic suffer from "inexplicable" glitches. Cibulka has been blocked from acquiring a regular phone line (as opposed to a cell phone). For several months one of his interviews, published on this Web site, titled False Democracies, was partially blocked in the Czech Republic so that its most significant contents were not available to Czech readers. This anomaly was cleared up only when it became an issue. Czech Telekom is state owned and state operated.]

Back in the dark age of Communism, in the year 1977 in the (then) Czechoslovakia, a group of dissidents published Charta 77. Among the signatories were Vaclav Havel and Petr Cibulka. A decade later the former became a worldwide personality celebrated as the first post-Communist president of the country. The later, a famous journalist, founder of the very popular weekly Uncensored News. There he unofficially published a list of informers of the Czechoslovak Secret Service, the infamous StB. The publishing of this so-called “Cibulka’s List” became a celebrated case and a thorn in the side of the “new” regime. The list named many known and less known people, who now aspired to political careers in the “post-Communist” Czechoslovakia. Those people, of course, vehemently protested the “smear” perpetrated against them. This turn of events made Mr. Cibulka a new pariah, the targeted enemy of many powerful people – Mr. Vaclav Havel among them.

Fast forward to the year 2004. Many things changed, many stayed the same. Today, Czechoslovakia doesn’t exist, also the weekly Uncensored News is the thing of the past. Vaclav Havel left the presidency and retired to his villa on the Atlantic coast in Portugal. Petr Cibulka, on the other hand, is still at home; in a country called the Czech Republic. He is now chairman of the political party Pravy Blok (Right Bloc), and operates a web page www.cibulka.net that is as critical of the “post-Communist” regime as Charta 77 was of the “old Communist” one. And, the very same people that dutifully served the “old” regime are now doing the dirty work of the “new” one.

Friday, February 6^th 2004. Noon. Petr Cibulka’s apartment in the center of Prague. Present: Ms. Mila Jebava, an official of Pravy Blok and Mr. Cibulka’s girlfriend. Without any warning, someone started to pick the lock and a group of people broke into the apartment. Eight persons all together. Two of them uniformed policemen. Ms. Mila Jebava, in shock, asked what was going on. The policemen refused to answer, refused to present any identification, refused to produce any court order authorizing them to enter the private residence of a citizen. What they produced was Vladimir Kolar, who identified himself as a representative of the Ministry of Interior and who said “they are taking over part of the apartment” -- without any legal document that would justify such action (you just have to take my word for this, dear lady!). Two other persons present were Mrs. Jana Hrbkova, former wife of Petr Cibulka and her son, who, according to Kolar, are the rightful owners of the apartment. Then, with help from the others, they immediately removed Petr’s furniture from one of the rooms (to the corridor) and changed the lock on the door.

Since Mr. Cibulka’s former wife lost any claim to the apartment by the court’s verdict in the divorce, given on August 8^th 2002, it is clear that the described action was political harassment, pure and simple. It was a shameless attempt to silence a critic of Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla. Proof of this can be seen in the fact that a direct complaint to the office of Minister of Interior Stanislav Gross was, and is, simply ignored. For the public, this police raid on the private residence of a well known dissident is presented as nothing more then strife between former husband and wife. (Nothing irregular, right?).

Reality offers the following irregularities: no judicial documents for “taking possession” were shown or given; three major elections are scheduled in the Czech Republic this year; Petr Cibulka, the untiring critic of political chicanery, cannot be silenced by the usual methods. Today a number of “former” Communist personalities, many of them on the “Cibulka List” (of secret police informers) are back in power, now in the “service” of Spidla’s Government. The Communist Party, despite the fact that the party was outlawed (Law 198/93) is gaining in power (an instance of Czech judicial corruption) and any critique of its criminal past is resented. Cibulka’s party, Pravy Blok and he himself, is a direct threat to the rising power of the Communist Party and its criminal personalities. For those reasons, using a willing former spouse and creating an “obvious family scandal” is one way to discredit the critic. Petr Cibulka wrote as follows to Minister of Interior Stanislav Gross:

"Incessant attacks against all who abide by ideas different than the official trend – against the authentic opposition that is not under the direct control of the establishment – present a direct threat to freedom and democracy in our country! The Czech Republic, under your leadership, is going back to its criminal past, and the treatment of your political opponents is returning to the darkest period of Communist persecution, of Charta 77, of the years 1977-1981, and to shameless political despotism and police impunity. Using repressive state organs against free and law abiding citizens for strictly political reasons is becoming a normal and obvious practice…."

For the official reply we will have to wait.

Jim Jakoubek has translated articles by J.R. Nyquist for publication by Pravy Blok's Web site http://www.cibulka.net/petr/. 

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