"Charter 77"
IN PURSUIT OF HUMAN RIGHTS 'Charter 77': A Czech Dissident Manifesto Recent months have seen a crackdown on the voices of dissent in all the countries of Eastern Europe. Nowhere has this been more...
...They have been the frequent targets of various forms of discrimination and chicanery on the part of the authorities or social organizations...
...These spokesmen are authorized to represent Charter 77 before the State and other organizations, as well as before the public at home and throughout the world, and they guarantee the authenticity of its documents by their signatures...
...The Ministry frequently interferes in the decisions of employers, inspires discrimination by authorities and organizations, influences the organs of justice, and even supervises the propaganda campaigns of the mass media...
...Open discussion of intellectual and cultural matters is out of the question...
...Their authors are responsible only to themselves and their own hierarchy, yet they have a decisive influence on the activity of the legislative as well as executive bodies of the State administration, on the courts, trade unions, social organizations, other political parties, business, factories, schools and similar installations, and their orders take precedence over the laws...
...Other civil rights, including the virtual banning of "willful interference with private life, the family, home, and correspondence" in Article 17 of the first pact, are gravely circumscribed by the fact that the Interior Ministry employs various practices to control the daily existence of citizens—such as telephone tapping and the surveillance of private homes, watching mail, shadowing individuals, searching apartments, and recruiting a network of informers from the ranks of the population (often by illegal intimidation or, sometimes, promises), etc...
...The freedoms guaranteed to individuals by the two documents are important assets of civilization...
...Countless citizens worry that if they declare their convictions, they themselves or their children will be deprived of an education...
...The right of free expression guaranteed by Article 19 of the first pact, for example, is quite illusory...
...It represents a general declaration of human rights...
...These conditions prevent working people from freely establishing labor and other organizations for the protection of their economic and social interests, and from freely using their right to strike as provided in Point 1, Article 8 of the second pact...
...Law No...
...If some organizations or citizens, in the interpretation of their rights and duties, become involved in a conflict with the directives, they cannot turn to a neutral authority, for none exists...
...Exercising the right to "seek, receive and impart information regardless of frontiers and of whether it is oral, written or printed," or "imparted through art...
...Every individual bears a share of responsibility for the general conditions in the country, and therefore also for compliance with the enacted pacts, which are as bindwork individually and collectively for respect for human and civil rights in Czechoslovakia and the world—the rights provided for in the enacted international pacts, in the Final Act of the Helsinki Conference, and in numerous other international documents against wars, violence and social and mental oppression...
...It has no intention of initiating its own programs for political or social reforms or changes, but it wants to lead in the sphere of its activity by means of a constructive dialogue with the political and State authorities—and particularly by drawing attention to various specific violations of civil and human rights, by preparing their documentation, by suggesting solutions, by submitting various more general proposals aimed at furthering these rights and their guarantees, by acting as a mediator in the event of conflict situations which might result in wrongdoings, etc...
...The feeling of this core-sponsibility, the belief in the value of civic engagement and the readiness to be engaged, together with the need to seek a new and more effective expression, gave us the idea of creating Charter 77, whose existence we publicly announce...
...Charter 77 is a free and informal and open association of people of various convictions, religions and professions, linked by the desire to dia abroad (the only public forum available to them)—have drawn attention to these systematic violations of human rights and democratic freedoms and have demanded a remedy in specific cases...
...Jan Patocka, Dr...
...Frequently this occurs under the pretext of a criminal indictment (as evidenced, among other instances, by the recent trial of young musicians...
...persons who manifest their religious faith either by word or action lose their jobs or are made to suffer other repressions...
...Their publication, however, is at the same time an urgent reminder of the many fundamental human rights that, regrettably, exist in our country only on paper...
...We trust that Charter 77 will contribute to making it possible for all citizens of Czechoslovakia to live and work as free people...
...it has no statutes, permanent organs or registered membership...
...This activity is not regulated by laws, it is covert, so the citizen is unable to protect himself against it...
...Hundreds of thousands of other citizens have been denied the "freedom from fear" cited in the Preamble to the first pact...
...and the right to equality before the law, in Article 26—all have been seriously curtailed...
...Below we present the first translation into English...
...A major reason for this persecution is "Charter 77," the now-famous petition for human rights, of which these four—along with almost 300 of their countrymen, representing virtually every walk of Czech life—are signatories...
...No political, philosophical, scientific, or artistic work that deviates in the slightest from the narrow framework of official ideology or esthetics is permitted to be produced...
...These pacts went into effect in our country on March 23, 1976...
...they have been denied any opportunity to defend themselves and are practically the victims of apartheid...
...The document appeared in Western Europe early this month...
...Vaclav Havel and Professor Jiri Hajek to act as spokesmen for Charter 77...
...They have been the goals of campaigns by many progressive people in the past, and their enactment can significantly contribute to a humane development of our society...
...People thus sentenced to jail are being treated in a manner that violates their human dignity, impairs their health, and attempts to break them morally...
...Point 2. Article 13 of the first pact—can result in persecution not only outside the court but also inside...
...Consequently, the right of assembly and the prohibition of its restraint, stemming from Articles 21 and 22 of the first pact...
...Just as arbitrary are the procedures for issuing visas to foreign nationals, many of whom are prevented from visiting Czechoslovakia because they had some official or friendly contact with persons who had been discriminated against in our country...
...the right to participate in public affairs, in Article 25...
...Religious freedom, emphatically guaranteed by Article 18 of the first pact, is systematically curbed with a despotic arbitrariness: Limits are imposed on the activities of priests, who are constantly threatened with the revocation of government permission to perform their legal procedures regulate the contents, form or application of such pronouncements, which are frequently issued orally, unbeknown to and beyond the control of the average citizen...
...Tens of thousands of citizens have been prevented from working in their professions for the sole reason that their views differ from the official ones...
...Many scientific and cultural workers, as well as other citizens, have been discriminated against simply because some years ago they legally published or openly articulated views condemned by the current political power...
...120 of the Czechoslovak Collection of Laws, published October 13, 1976, includes the text of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, both signed in behalf of our Republic in 1968 and confirmed at the 1975 Helsinki Conference...
...Charter 77 is founded on the concepts of solidarity and friendship of people who share a concern for the fate of ideals to which they have linked their lives and work...
...But not on it alone...
...Its desire is to serve the common interest, as have numerous similar organizations of civic initiative East and West...
...Some citizens—privately at their places of work, or through the meing for the people as for the government...
...they live in constant peril of losing their jobs or other benefits if they express their opinions...
...False accusations cannot be refuted, and it function...
...Charter 77 is not intended to be a basis for opposition political activity...
...Point 2, Article 12 of the first pact, guaranteeing the right to freely leave one's country, is generally violated...
...Contrary to Article 13 of the second pact, guaranteeing the right to education, many young people are prevented from pursuing higher education because of their views or even because of their parents' views...
...In the cases of politically motivated persecution, the organs of interrogation and justice violate the rights of the defendants and their counsel, contrary to Article 14 of the first pact as well as Czechoslovakia's own laws...
...Nowhere has this been more the case than in Czechoslovakia, where in the past few weeks such prominent citizens as playwrights Pavel Kohout and Vaclav Havel, philosopher Jan Patacka, and former Foreign Minister Jiri Hajek have been harassed and detained...
...Freedom of speech is suppressed by the government's management of all mass media, including the publishing and cultural institutions...
...Awhole range Of civil rights is severely restricted or completely suppressed by the effective method of subordinating all institutions and organizations in the State to the political directives of the ruling Party's apparatuses and the pronouncements of highly influential individuals...
...By its symbolic name, Charter 77 stresses that it has been established on the threshold of what has been declared the year of political prisoners, in the course of which a meeting in Belgrade is to review the progress—or lack of it—achieved since the Helsinki Conference...
...Public defense against false and defamatory charges by official propaganda organs is impossible, despite the legal protection against attacks on one's reputation and honor unequivocally afforded by Article 17 of the first pact...
...Everyone who agrees with its idea and participates in its work and supports it, belongs to it...
...We welcome the fact that the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic has agreed to enter into these covenants...
...Under the pretext of "protecting the State security," contained in Point 3, departure is tied to various illegal conditions...
...Public criticism of social conditions is prohibited...
...But they have received no response, or have themselves become the objects of investigation...
...since that date our citizens have had the right, and the State has had the duty, to abide by them...
...In us and other citizens who will join Charter 77, they will find their collaborators who will participate in the necessary negotiations, who will accept partial tasks, and will share the entire responsibility...
...Neither the Constitution of the CSSR nor any of the country's other is futile to attempt rectification or to seek legal redress...
...religious instruction in schools is suppressed, et cetera...
...As signatories of this declaration, we designate Dr...
...The responsibility for the preservation of civil rights naturally rests with the State power...
...Charter 77 is not an organization...
Vol. 60 • January 1977 • No. 3
