Thirty Years Ago In Prague, Student Protests Snowballed Into The Velvet Revolution
November 15, 2019 07:00 GMT
By Lucie Steinzova
In 1989, just eight days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a student protest against communist rule was violently put down in Prague, the Czechoslovak capital. The crackdown on November 17 only strengthened the protest movement and, within days, hundreds of thousands of people were on the streets.
By the end of the month, the Communist Party agreed to hold free elections. In December 1989, dissident playwright Vaclav Havel was elected president by the country's Federal Assembly, marking the beginning of a new democratic era.
1 In January 1989, protesters were already mustering their courage. In this photo, police violently detain demonstrators marking the 20th anniversary of the self-immolation of student Jan Palach. His suicide was an act of protest against the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.
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14 The protests had to relocate to a space large enough to accommodate the huge numbers. Half a million people came to listen to speeches from Havel and other opposition leaders in Letna Park on November 26.
See more at: https://www.rferl.org/a/czechoslovakia-prague-velvet-revolution-communism/30217717.html
200,000 people are out in the Czech Republic this weekend demonstrating that the current leader should step down.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50446661Not even being widely reported but leave it to the BBC to do so.
Also:
Velvet Revolution: Prague's ghosts of communism
By Rob Cameron BBC News, Prague
The Berlin Wall had only just fallen when 15,000 students gathered in Prague on 17 November 1989.
It was a moment that precipitated the end of communism in Czechoslovakia and is being marked 30 years on by the people of two states, Czechs and Slovaks.
Three memorable locations in the Czech capital symbolise the Communist regime and its downfall - a peaceful overthrow that became known as the Velvet Revolution.
Read more at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50419667
