MOSCOW, August 25 (RIA Novosti) – Moscow police said that 10 protesters were detained Sunday for rallying on Moscow’s iconic Red Square to commemorate the 45th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia - and the protest rally of Soviet dissidents that got the original participants jailed, exiled or forcibly committed to psychiatric institutions.
In August 1968, Soviet and Warsaw pact troops entered Czechoslovakia to quell the Prague Spring – Czechoslovakian socialist government’s attempt to build “socialism with a human face.” Seventy two people got killed and hundreds were wounded, and reformist Czechoslovakian leader Alexander Dubcek was later forced to resign.
Seven Soviet dissidents, including human rights defender and poet Natalia Gorbanevskaya, rallied on Red Square to protest the invasion on August 25, 1968. Minutes after unfurling their banners, one of which read “For Your and Our Freedom,” they were brutally rounded up – one of them had his front teeth knocked out – and were later sentenced to jail, exile or forced psychiatric treatment.
Gorbanevskaya, who was “diagnosed” with schizophrenia and forcibly kept in a psychiatric hospital until 1972, headed the Sunday rally along with 10 modern-day Kremlin critics and opposition activists, according to a video posted on the Grani.ru website.
Just like 45 years ago, the rally was dispersed just minutes after the protesters unfurled the banner reading “For Your and Our Freedom,” and ten participants were rounded up and taken to a police station in central Moscow, according to the video.
Moscow police spokesman told RIA Novosti that the ten were detained for “holding an unsanctioned rally.” He did not specify how long they will be kept in detention and what punishment they will face.
Luckily, Gorbanevskaya not among them. The 77-year-old who now lives in Paris and came to Moscow to participate in the replica of the 1968 rally and to hold her poetry readings, she told the Dozhd television.
In 1976, US folk singer Joan Baez released “Natalya,” a song she wrote about Gorbanevskaya. Introducing the song on her From Every Stage live album, she said: "It is because of people like Natalya Gorbanevskaya, I am convinced, that you and I are still alive and walking around on the face of the earth."
No comments :
Post a Comment