[ALBSA-Info] NYTimes.com Article: Communist Effort to Prosecute Czech Priest Raises Ghosts of Past

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Communist Effort to Prosecute Czech Priest Raises Ghosts of Past

November 26, 2001 

By PETER S. GREEN


 

PRAGUE, Nov. 25 - When Senate elections rolled around last
fall in the small southern Czech village of Rakvice, the
32-year old parish priest, the Rev. Vojtech Vlastimil
Protivinsky, warned his parishioners against voting for the
local Communist Party candidates. 

In sermons, and in a leaflet handed out to his
congregation, Father Protivinsky warned: "The Communist
Party of Bohemia and Moravia presents a grave danger to
democracy, to basic human rights and to each one of us.
Stop the return of Communism, go to vote on Sunday and cast
your ballot against the Communist candidate." 

The Communist candidate, Marta Struskova, lost and the
chairman of the local party committee filed a criminal
complaint with the police accusing the priest of
"disparaging a nation, race or belief." The matter was
largely forgotten until a week ago, when it was catapulted
to the national headlines after the police announced they
would begin a formal investigation of Father Protivinsky. 

President Vaclav Havel stepped in on Wednesday, and blocked
the prosecution. The local prosecutor who had begun the
proceedings resigned, but by then the young cleric's
situation had become the topic of national debate,
reawakening the bitterness many of Communism's victims
still feel toward a system that oppressed their country for
42 years. 

"I don't think ideas should gain acceptance in our society
that are an assault on basic human rights and against which
every individual should take a stand," Father Protivinsky
said, explaining his actions on the BBC's Czech language
service. 

Political analysts have noted the paradox that the
Communists, who imprisoned thousands of clerics during
their 42 years of totalitarian rule, used the instruments
of democracy to prosecute a priest who disagreed with them.
"This case is about freedom of speech and about the
chutzpah the Communists have been showing since 1989, and
which is increasing now that memories of their crimes are
fading," said Petr Brod, a historian and the editor of the
BBC's Czech language news service in Prague. 

Mr. Brod and many other Czechs are also concerned that
their country has not done enough to call to account those
whose crimes, from murder and torture to theft and
defamation, underpinned Communist rule. 

"It's absurd," said Monika Pajerova, a student leader
during the 1989 Velvet Rrevolution to overturn Communism
and today a centrist candidate for Parliament. "Instead of
prosecuting the former officials of the Communist Party,
they go after people who say what everyone else is
thinking." 

The Communists for their part are unrepentant about either
the past or their efforts to prosecute Father Protivinsky. 

"Free speech must exist," said a party spokeswoman, Vera
Zezulkova, "But it can't be replaced by lying accusations.
Does he have the freedom to lie?" The Communists say Father
Protivinsky is tarring their party with the crimes of the
cold-war era Communists and they protest their innocence. 

A Communist member of Parliament, Miroslav Ransdorf,
contends that the real danger is a resurgence of
clericalism, "the clergy's power to meddle in the country's
political affairs." 

The Rev. Daniel Herman, a spokesman for the Czech Bishops'
Conference, said the village priest was not playing party
politics. "He said what the Catholic church believes, that
Communism is evil and wrong," Father Herman said.
"Communism isn't dead. It's still a latent danger." 

Even so, the Communists continue to draw a steady 10 to 13
percent of support by potential voters in polls, with
parliamentary elections coming up next June. They have 24
seats of 200 in the lower house of Parliament, although
every other party has ruled out letting them into
government. 

In fact, in a poll in June, about one- fourth of the adults
interviewed said they believed that life was better under
the Communists. Sociologists say this is largely a
nostalgia among the elderly and less-educated for the
better pensions and free health care during Communism. 

Political analysts say the current strength of the
Communists comes from the relative ease of the transition
in the Velvet Revolution in 1989. 

That meant there was no pressure on the Communists to
reform, apologize for the past and become a modern
social-democratic party as the Polish and Hungarian
Communists have done. 

"The problem in our country is that there is no reformed
Communist Party," said Bohumil Dolezal, a commentator at
the center-right newspaper Lidove Noviny. "And today the
party is not a democratic party, but it exists
legitimately."

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/26/international/europe/26CZEC.html?ex=1007799614&ei=1&en=2d9a80dda51ed5f5



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