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Dissent in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic

First published in West Germany in January 1977, the Manifesto of the Czechoslovak dissident group Charter 77 called on the Communist regime to recognize the human rights codified in the country’s 1960 constitution, the 1975 Helsinki Accords (see “Evaluating the Evidence 29.1: Human Rights Under the Helsinki Accords”), and other international agreements on civil and political rights. The 243 courageous individuals who signed the Charter faced harsh state retaliation and their opposition had little immediate impact, but their ideas expressed a deep desire for civil rights and helped lay the intellectual foundations for the revolutions of 1989.

The human rights and freedoms underwritten by these covenants [on international civil and political rights, including the Helsinki Accords, signed by the Czechoslovak government] constitute features of civilized life for which many progressive movements have striven throughout history and whose codification could greatly assist humane developments in our society.

We accordingly welcome the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic’s accession to those agreements.

Their publication, however, serves as a powerful reminder of the extent to which basic human rights in our country exist, regrettably, on paper alone.

The right to freedom of expression, for example, guaranteed by Article 19 of the first-mentioned covenant, is in our case purely illusory. Tens of thousands of our citizens are prevented from working in their own fields for the sole reason that they hold views differing from official ones, and are discriminated against and harassed in all kinds of ways by the authorities and public organizations. Deprived as they are of any means to defend themselves, they become victims of a virtual apartheid. . . .

Freedom of religious confession, emphatically guaranteed by Article 18 of the first covenant, is continually curtailed by arbitrary official action. . . .

This state of affairs likewise prevents workers and others from exercising the unrestricted right to establish trade unions and other organizations to protect their economic and social interests. . . .

Further civic rights, including the explicit prohibition of “arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home or correspondence” (Article 17 of the first covenant), are seriously vitiated by the various forms of interference in the private life of citizens exercised by the Ministry of the Interior, for example by bugging telephones and houses, opening mail, following personal movements, searching homes, setting up networks of neighborhood informers (often recruited by illicit threats or promises) and in other ways. . . .

Clause 2, Article 12 of the first covenant, guaranteeing every citizen the right to leave the country, is consistently violated, or under the pretense of “defense of national security” is subjected to various unjustifiable conditions (Clause 3). . . .

Responsibility for the maintenance of rights in our country naturally devolves in the first place on the political and state authorities. Yet not only on them: everyone bears his share of responsibility for the conditions that prevail and accordingly also for the observance of legally enshrined agreements, binding upon all individuals as well as upon governments.

It is this sense of co-responsibility, our belief in the importance of its conscious public acceptance and the general need to give it new and more effective expression that led us to the idea of creating Charter 77, whose inception we today publicly announce. . . .

We believe that Charter 77 will help to enable all citizens of Czechoslovakia to work and live as free human beings.

EVALUATE THE EVIDENCE

Source: “Appendix D: Manifesto of Charter 77 — Czechoslovakia,” in Czechoslovakia (Former): A Country Study, Library of Congress, https://archive.org/details/czechoslovakiaco00gawd.