DISSENT RISES AMONG CZECHOSLOVAKIAN INTELLECTUALS
An international literary dispute was opened with the publication of a manifesto reportedly signed by more than 450 Czechoslovakian intellectuals which appeared in the September 3 Sunday Times of London.
The manifesto accused party representatives of ordering the "crossing-off at first of 12 and later of 4 of the names of the most courageous colleagues from the list of candidates" for the top committee of the Writers' Union.
The statement charged that the candidates had been "put under police surveillance and prohibited from publishing their works." The events were report-— ed to have occurred during and after the fourth congress of Czechoslovak writers held in Prague June 27 to 29.
The fact that the Times withheld the names of the signers "to prevent reprisals" led to questions as to the authenticity of the document. Czech authorities have hotly denied that the document is genuine, although in a curiously guarded manner.
The secretariat of the central committee of the Czechoslovak Writers' Union said the manifesto "was not published either by the union...or by its elected bodies....What is more, the union has no knowledge that the document was drawn up by Czechoslovak writers or any group of them independently."
Rude Pravo, the main party daily newspaper, commented September 8 that: "It does not express the views of the majority of Czechoslovak writers, though it may express the views of a small group."
A categorical denial of the authenticity of the statement or the truth of its charges is carefully avoided.
The Sunday Times defended the legitimacy of the manifesto in its Septenber 10 issue:
"Without prejudicing the security of the unorthodox channels between Prague and the West, it can be stated that several copies of the document left Prague by different and well-established routes, one being the use of a special courier. By September 1 three of these copies had reached their destinations.
"They were identical, thus excluding the possibility that the manifesto was re-written, edited or altered by emigré Czech writers after reaching the hands of the initial recipients..."
The London Observer reported Septenber 10 that Czech authorities "have clamped down on all State book publishing houses and magazine printers."
"All publications, films, television and radio programmes," they said, "will be strictly censored."
Prominent Czechoslovak party and government officials are reported to have opposed the hard line toward the intellectuals backed by President Novotny. The Observer claims that Novotny's critics include the premier, Dr. Josef Lenart; Dr. Vacilav David, foreign minister; and Karel Hoffmann, minister of Culture and Information.
LETTER FROM YIOURA
(The following letter, written from the prison-island concentration camp of Yiotira, Greece, was printed in the August 1967 issue of Memo, the national bulletin of Women Strike for Peace (WSP).
(According to an introductory note, the letter was written on a scrap of paper dated June 15, 1967, and reached London the same month.
{The explanatory appeal following the letter was written by Norma Spector and printed in the same issue of Memo.
CWSP is in the forefront of the antiwar movement in the U.S. and has played a most active role in organizing mass demonstrations seeking the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnan.]
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On the morning of April 21, Athens was not awakened by the milkman but by the rumble of tanks. Those few shops which had time to open, quickly shut down again. Streets were deserted. Noisy Athens appeared a strange city -- inhabited only by the army and police.
People were asleep as police rushed into their houses and got them out of bed. Tanks and armored cars stood out-— side your door. Telephones were cut and the big city turned into many small isolated houses. Those who had time to turn on the radio heard the decree declaring martial law signed by an anonymous Prime Minister and anonymous cabinet members!
Police hastily arrested men and women giving no answers to their protests, not allowing them to take even blankets with them. Everyone was told "the Chief of the local police wants you for a few seconds."
Thus, in a few hours 1,500 people were brutally torn away from society; 1,500 households overwhelmed by anxiety over the fate of relatives. The city's life seemed to have stopped, nobody conversed with the arrested people. Only the Piraeus General Security gave a strong warning of what was to come by barbarously beating those arrested.
After a while soldiers with bayonets fixed and machine guns ready squeezed the human freight into jeeps and transported it to three camps set up in Athens...at the racecourse, . the football grounds of AEK [Athletike Enosis Konstaninoupoleos -- Athletic Union of Constantinople] and Karaiskaki. Thus began the operation "persecution" which ended in so many people being thrown onto the strange uninhabited island of Yiotra which has no port, no water, no vegetation.
Democrats, resistance fighters, communists, socialists, liberals from the cities and countryside, workers and intellectuals, fathers and mothers, old, ill, crippled...all found themselves in Yiotra. Not even the seventy-year-old Vlassis, nearly bent double; not even the crutches of the crippled, not even the pregnant women, or four-year-old Makis who was with his mother, moved the law of the military fascism. The country's leading intellectuals like eighty-year-old Vasilis, Rotas, the engraver Vaso Katraki, the poet John Ritsos, were thrown into Yiotira. Ilias Iliou, the parliamentar leader of EDA [United Democratic Left] was sent to Yiofra to demonstrate that the May 28 elections were off.
A CAMP ON THE RACECOURSE: The racecourse camp went through five days and nights of horror. Four hundred and seventy people were squeezed under the stands. There were no toilets and when people had to relieve themselves they were escorted by soldiers with fixed bayonets. In front of the door soldiers in tanks aimed their guns day and night from two tanks.
Machine guns pointed at the prisoners continuously...On Sunday afternoon, people were not allowed out for their natural needs and the door was closed. Silent anxiety spread through the roon. At about 11:45 a major of the guards entered and called the M.P.Ilias Iliou to come out. He was pulled to the left side of the door as he went out...and with sticks hit on his hands, legs and head, then bloodied his face with punches. A doctor among the arrested gave him first aid when he was returned 20 minutes later. Terror reigned in the roon.
On Monday morning the major in charge pretended that he did not know anything, and assured the prisoners about the safety of their lives. The same evening they beat up two others.
On Tuesday morning they brought in the Cypriot Ilio Ioannides and the Mayor of Kalithea. That afternoon, while Resistance hero Panayiotis Ellis was returned from the toilet, the black-beretted captain shot him twice at point-blank range, suddenly and with no reason. Ellis died instantly, his lung pierced.
The prisoners began shouting and protesting. The director was forced to meet a delegation who demanded assurances for our lives...For five days the prisoners in the racecourse lived lives of doom. Everyone was psychologically ready, calm and determined, sending his last thoughts
to relatives and waiting helplessly. At 2 a.m. of Wednesday morning, they were awakened to start their journey to Yiodra.
AEK FOOTBALL GROUNDS CAMP: Two dressing rooms were used for the prisoners. One hundred and eighty people lived in the larger room for five days and were not allowed out at all. A tunnel used by the football players to go to the playing field was used as a toilet by these 180 people. About 100 people were squeezed into the other roon.
The prisoners slept on the bare floor in shifts because there was not enough room for all of them to lie down. There was no fresh air at all. The guard consisted of army units, under the charge of a black-beretted major who ordered the soldiers to keep up continuous shooting into the air. The camp gave the impression of being a battleground. Shots followed every demand by prisoners to be allowed to go for water or to the toilet.
KARAISKAKT CAMP. The Karaiskaki football grounds were used for prisoners from Piraeus. There were two toilets and two water taps for the 600 people. None were allowed to go out at all. Very few were properly clothed, and here, too, they slept in shifts on the floor.
The Piraeus prisoners arrived at the camp after being brutally beaten in the security building. Arriving in such horrifying condition were the mayor of Peristeri; trade-union leaders were especially brutally beaten; resistance fighter Diakrousis was beaten till he was unconscious and the same thing happened to Venieri, an old woman and mother. The dentist Elli Ioanidou had all her ribs broken and was beaten over the liver. The military doctor, when he saw these people, said, "Were they beaten by cannibals?" And the army told the police: "We will not accept them in the condition in which you are bringing them to us."
TRANSFER: For five days those arrested were completely cut off from their relatives. Nor did the arrested know what was going to happen to them. We lived in fear...until we were awakened for the journey to Yiofra, the hell haunted by human bodies and condemned by the world, that was being reopened by 1,350 Athenian and Piraeus citizens.
By May 15, 6,299 people inhabited the rock island. The climate is such that it kills even the natural vegetation. Strong winds sweep it every day. The weather changes from hour to hour; south winds, north winds, dampness, cold and heat.
One thousand seven hundred and forty-two have been put in the only "building" on the island; a dungeon used by the ancient emperors and described by Court of Appeals Judge Bizimis in his report as “hellish." Here the new city of fascism is being built.
FOOD: It is supposed that 17 drachmas is spent on the food of each prisoner daily. This, however, is impossible. Transport to and from Syros is difficult and is done rarely because of the weather. Thus, the prisoners are being given the remnants of the army food supplies which have gone bad. For days we ate only bread.
The parcels and money sent us by relatives are being held in Syros. The Ministry's announcement about meat, eggs, etc., as being food for the prisoners could be a joke if one could laugh with the hunger of 6,500 people.
The water must be transported from Piraeus and stored. There is barely enough for drinking and is just bearable for that. We cannot keep ourselves clean and the situation is made worse by the lack of a sewage system. The uninhabited island, suddenly occupied by 6,500 people is becoming a source of infection.
Initially, open space was the only toilet. After old sewers (trenches) were repaired by us, leading to small gullies, the sea in these places has become foul. Thus, even the sea cannot help us keep clean.
HEALTH AND FAMILY CONDITIONS OF PRISONERS: Of the 1,171 prisoners in Sector C, 425 (35%) are gravely ill. Whole families were brought to Yiofra, mothers with babies, 58 husbands with their wives. Twenty-one mothers have been separated from infants of one month to three years of age. Eleven of these women are here with their husbands (so the infants are not even with their fathers). Sixteen mothers are here with children under six years old. Forty-three mothers are here with children up to teen-age...
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(Helena Bena was arrested on the night of the coup. She is a prisoner on the island of Yiofra. Helena is one of thousands; but she is also one of us. She was the representative of the Greek women at the Hague Conference and Demonstration organized by WSP against the NATO proposal for a Multilateral Force.
(Helena has a four-month-old baby, born prematurely -- she had been trying to have a baby for some years -- and the baby was barely three months old when the police forcibly separated the infant from its nother.
(Because we know Helena Bena we can make a special appeal on her behalf: Ask your Congressmen to make inquiries
about her and urge her release. Also as a matter of humanity, urge humane treatment of prisoners. Ask Congressmen to inquire about the prisoners. Pressure for their release. (People who escaped the coup and thousands shocked by the repressive measures of the junta are organizing a resistance movement. They need money desperately.
(If you can raise or send any, it should go to: League for Democracy in Greece, 376 Gray's Inn Road, London, W.C.1, England. Money is also needed to send blankets, soap, food, medicines, etc., to the prisoners (probably through the International Red Cross) and perhaps you may find it easier to raise money for such specifics. Please...these are people who have been fighting with us for peace. -- Norma Spector. )