Charter 77
How It's Used
"Dissidents find they can meet unimpeded. On occasion, the official press even gives them a voice. Two days after an economics professor, Arif Dalila, publicly called on people to take to the streets, Al Thoura, the daily organ of the mukhabarat, published two pages devoted to his critique of Assad-senior’s economic management. Civil servants write petitions to the president appealing for an end to military rule. And 99 writers and artists have signed a charter demanding the lifting of martial law, the release of all 1,500 political prisoners and a free press. They call it Syria’s Charter 77." —no author listed, "Is Syria really changing? Syrians feel politically freer under their new president. But they cannot yet tell whether the change is genuine," The Economist, November 16, 2000. "Mr. Solih said he thought he would be safe in the Czech Republic, but he apparently did not reckon with the Czech bureaucracy. The police simply accepted the Uzbek warrant from Interpol and entered it in their database. When Mr. Solih went through a passport check, his name flashed red on a police computer and he was led away in handcuffs.
"'Today I sit here instead of Vaclav Havel,' Mr. Solih said with a light laugh. A passing guard whispered: 'This is madness. It's a throwback to the days when we had the Charter 77 signers in here,' a reference to Mr. Havel and other signers of the Charter 77 human rights petition under the Communists.
"While Mr. Solih sits in his cell, a Czech court is examining documents from Uzbekistan before deciding whether to extradite him to Tashkent. Czech leaders, former political prisoners and even human rights activists dismiss the notion that Mr. Solih will actually be expelled." —Peter S. Green, "Uzbek Poet And Dissident Is Now a Voice In Prague Jail," The New York Times, December 9, 2001. "In March 1976, more than 20 people, many of them musicians including every member of the Plastic People—but not Bondy—were arrested. Sentences were handed out for 'organised disturbance of the peace', with Jirous getting 18 months.
"The incident led, on January 1 1977 to the Charter 77 petition. Among the Charter 77 movement's founders was the future, post-Stalinist Czechoslovak president Vaclav Havel. It began as a protest against that police clampdown on the Plastic People. It developed during the Husak years of intense repression as the voice of opposition." —Ken Hunt, "Egon Bondy: Dissident Czech writer and lyricist for Plastic People of the Universe," The Guardian (UK), April 20, 2007. “Even members of the intelligentsia have become more vocal, demanding political change in a petition released this week that was modeled after the 1977 one that challenged the Soviet Union's domination of Czechoslovakia. ‘In the world, authoritarian systems are approaching the dusk of their endings,’ says the document, signed by more than 300 prominent people." “Charter 08 lays out a comprehensive overhaul of the current political system by ending one-party rule and introducing freedom of speech, an independent court system and direct elections. It is modeled after Charter 77, which was put together by scholars and demanded rights for Czechoslovakia in 1977, preceding the collapse of communism by 12 years.” Also Known As (AKA)
Charta 77 Links Beyond eAlmanac
Wikipedia article on "Charter 77"
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