The timing of the issuing of Charter 77 was no accident. In 1976 the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights were officially integrated into Czechoslovak law. The charter drew attention to this fact, highlighting the discrepancies between the new laws and the realities of life in Czechoslovakia. The charter became the foundational document of the Velvet Revolution. Crucially, it did not announce the creation of a political party or a new ideology. Instead it was a declaration of what its authors saw as a simple and undeniable truth, that all people have a duty to respect the civil and human rights of others. As such, its message was directed at Czechoslovak society as a whole, not just the ruling elite. As you read it, think about how its authors’ defined themselves and their intent. Why did they think it was important to make clear that Charter 77 was “not an organization” and that it had “no rules, permanent bodies or formal membership”?

In the Czechoslovak Register of Laws No. 120 of 13 October 1976, texts were published of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which were signed on behalf of our republic in 1968, reiterated at Helsinki in 1975 and came into force in our country on 23 March 1976. From that date our citizens have enjoyed the rights, and our state the duties, ensuing from them.

The human rights and freedoms underwritten by these Covenants 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.

Hundreds of thousands of other citizens are denied that “freedom from fear” mentioned in the preamble to the first Covenant, being condemned to the constant risk of unemployment or other penalties if they voice their own opinions.

In violation of article 13 of the second-mentioned Covenant, guaranteeing everyone the right to education, countless young people are prevented from studying because of their own views or even their parents’. Innumerable citizens live in fear of their own, or their children’s right to education being withdrawn if they should ever speak up in accordance with their convictions.

Any exercise of the right to “seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print” or “in the form of art” specified in Article 19, clause 2 of the first Covenant is followed by extra-judicial and even judicial sanctions, often in the form of criminal charges as in the recent trial of young musicians.

Freedom of public expression is inhibited by the centralized control of all the communication media and of publishing and cultural institutions. No philosophical, political or scientific view or artistic activity that departs ever so slightly from the narrow bounds of official ideology or aesthetics is allowed to be published; no open criticism can be made of abnormal social phenomena; no public defence is possible against false and insulting charges made in official propaganda; the legal protection against “attacks on honour and reputation” clearly guaranteed by article 17 of the first Covenant is in practice non-existent; false accusations cannot be rebutted and any attempt to secure compensation or correction through the courts is futile; no open debate is allowed in the domain of thought and art. Many scholars, writers, artists and others are penalized for having legally published or expressed, years ago, opinions which are condemned by those who hold political power today.

Freedom of religious confession, emphatically guaranteed by article 18 of the first Covenant, is continually curtailed by arbitrary official action; by interference with the activity of churchmen, who are constantly threatened by the refusal of the state to permit them the exercise of their functions, or by the withdrawal of such permission; by financial or other transactions against those who express their religious faith in word or action; by constraints on religious training, and so forth.

One instrument for the curtailment or, in many cases, complete elimination of many civic rights is the system by which all national institutions and organizations are in effect subject to political directives from the machinery of the ruling party and to decisions made by powerful individuals.

The Constitution of the Republic, its laws and legal norms do not regulate the form or content, the issuing or application of such decisions; they are often only given out verbally, unknown to the public at large and beyond its powers to check; their originators are responsible to no one but themselves and their own hierarchy; yet they have a decisive impact the decision-making and executive organs of government, justice, trade unions, interest groups and all other organizations of the other political parties, enterprises, factories, institutions, offices and so on, for whom these instructions have precedence even before the law.

Where organizations or individuals, in the interpretation of their rights and duties, come into conflict with such directives, they cannot have recourse to any non-party authority, since none such exists. This constitutes, of course, a serious limitation of the right ensuing from articles 21 and 22 of the first-mentioned Covenant, which provides for freedom of association and forbids any restriction on its exercise; from article 25 on the right to take part in the conduct of public affairs, and from article 26 stipulating equal protection by the law without discrimination.

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, and from freely enjoying the right to strike provided for in clause 1 of article 8 in the second-mentioned Covenant.

Further civil 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.

The Ministry frequently interferes in employers’ decisions, instigates acts of discrimination by authorities and organizations, brings weight to bear on the organs of justice and even orchestrates propaganda campaigns in the media. This activity is governed by no law and, being clandestine, affords citizens no chance of defending themselves.

In cases of prosecution on political grounds the investigative and judicial organs violate the rights of those charged and of those defending them, as guaranteed by article 14 of the first Covenant and, indeed, by Czechoslovak law. The prison treatment of those sentenced in such cases is an affront to their human dignity and a menace to their health, being aimed at breaking their morale.

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 “defence of national security” is subjected to various unjustifiable conditions (clause 3). The granting of entry visas to foreigners is also treated arbitrarily, and many are unable to visit Czechoslovakia merely because of professional or personal contacts with those of our citizens who are subject to discrimination.

Some of our people — either in private, at their places of work or by the only feasible public channel, the foreign media — have drawn attention to the systematic violation of human rights and democratic freedoms and demanded amends in specific cases. But their pleas have remained largely ignored or been made grounds for police investigation.

Responsibility for the maintenance of civil rights in our country naturally devolves in the first place on the political and state authorities. Yet not only on them: everyone bears his or her 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.

Charter 77 is a loose, informal and open association of people of various shades of opinions, faiths and professions united by the will to strive individually and collectively for the respecting of civil and human rights in our own country and throughout the world — rights accorded to all people by the two mentioned international Covenants, by the Final Act of the Helsinki conference and by numerous other international documents opposing war, violence and social or spiritual oppression, and which are comprehensively laid down in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Charter 77 springs from a background of friendship and solidarity among people who share our concern for those ideals that have inspired, and continue to inspire, their lives and their work.

Charter 77 is not an organization; it has no rules, permanent bodies or formal membership. It embraces everyone who agrees with its ideas and participates in its work. It does not form the basis for any oppositional political activity. Like many similar citizen initiatives in various countries, West and East, it seeks to promote the general public interest.

It does not aim, then, to set out its own platform of political or social reform or change, but within its own field of impact to conduct a constructive dialogue with the political and state authorities, particularly by drawing attention to individual cases where human and civil rights are violated, to document such grievances and suggest remedies, to make proposals of a more general character calculated to reinforce such rights and machinery for protecting them, to act as intermediary in situations of conflict which may lead to violation of rights, and so forth.

By its symbolic name, Charter 77 denotes that it has come into being at the start of a year proclaimed as Political Prisoners’ Year — a year in which a conference in Belgrade is due to review the implementation of the obligations assumed at Helsinki.

As signatories, we hereby authorize Professor Dr. Jan Patoka, Václav Havel and Professor Jiri Hájek to act as the spokespersons for the Charter. These spokespersons are endowed with full authority to represent it vis-à-vis state and other bodies, and the public at home and abroad, and their signatures attest the authenticity of documents issued by the Charter. They will have us and others who join us as their colleagues, taking part in any necessary negotiations, shouldering particular tasks and sharing every responsibility.

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

Source: Václav Havel, et. al., The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1985), pp. 217–221. Copyright © 1985 Palach Press. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK.

Questions to Consider