CZECH FRAME-UP TRIALS BEGIN

Thirteen opponents of the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, among the m former officials of the Communist Party, are standing trial in Prague on charges of subversion. The charges, under Article 98 of the Penal Code, carry years imprisonment offences' sentences of up to five or ten They relate allegedly committed during the November presidential election campaign last year.

The defendants, some of whom have been in prison since that time, are said to have circulated leaflets point. ing out that citizens had the constitutional right to delete the names of candidates on the printed ballot paper.

Im its michtone of theil, from which public barred, the official news agency Ceteka said the defendants 'were accused of disseminating illegal leaflets in 1970 and 1971, especially in connection with the election, with the aim of disrupting the consolidation process of our state'.

Apparently it is sedition in Czechoslovakia remind citizens of their constitutional One of the chief defendants in Prague is jiri Mueller, former student leader, who was twice expelled from Prague's technical university for organ1zIng student protests against the Warsaw Pact invasion In 1969 he chaired the Prague Student Parliament, which refused to give support to the stooge leadership of Gustav Husak, the Kremlin appointee who replaced Alexandr Dubcek when the latter was driven from office. Mueller several times fallen foul of the Stalinist authorities, who refused him OCCURSO to take a higher degree at the university.

same court accused with Mueller are Jan Tesar, young historian, and Rudolf Battek, a sociologist. Two other young men are accused with this group of defendants. The court is also trying in her absence Mrs Jean Kavanova (née Edwards) the widow of a prominent Czechoslovak diplomat. She now lives 1n England, though retaining Czechoslovak citizenship. Another trial in the same courthouse groups together Jiri Littera, former secretary of the Prague Communist Party organization, and number of 'associates'. Littera played prominent part in organizing the clandestine 14th congress of the Czechoslovak Party after the Warsaw Pact invasion.

The Congress, held at Vysocany, a workers' suburb outside the capital, has been thorn in the side of the usurping Husak leadership It was held two days after the invasion and roundly condemned the 'gross violation of state sovereignty' by the Soviet armies.

Husak and his supporters later staged another congress, after extensive to reverse the decisions of the 14th congress; but even with the 'expert' assistance of Soviet secret police advisers it has taken Husak four years to purge the party to his satis faction.

The d Pre semi-se held under semi-secret conditions, with the public excluded from the court. In essence, however, they are show trials, designed to intimidate the opposition to the Soviet occupation and the puppet Husak regime.

The Kremlin's Czechoslovak stooges have made repeated pledges about not returning to the era of show trials. But the court process now under way in Prague makes it clear that these pledges were a sham. They are not the first political trials to be staged in Czechoslovakia since the August invasion four years ago. But for the first time they bring together key figures from the Dubcek period who, though repeatedly victimized by bureaucratic measures, have not so far been brought into court.

Many of the defendants in the current trial were held in prison for a period in 1969, before the government decided to release them with a warning.

This was the case with Rudolf Battek, who was originally held in October 1969, after his immunity as a member of the National Assembly had been lifted by decree. ( Jan Tesar was imprisoned at the same time, though both were later released. Clearly the bureaucracy at that time did not feel secure enough to move directly to show trials.

Another big wave of arrests, which led to over 300 convictions on charges of 'crimes against property' and 'crimes of violence', followed. mass demonstrations in January 1970 on the first anniversary of the suicide of Jan Palach.

Palach, a Prague student, burned himself to death in a terrible protest against the Warsaw Pact invasion.

'EXPERTS' Shortly after this demonstration there arrived in Prague two Soviet 'advisers' who had been at the centre of the preparations for the Slansky frame-up trial of 1953. described as party historians, The cynically were Alexei Beshkanov, who served as a leading officer in the Soviet secret police in Czechoslovakia from 1951 to 1957, and Vladimir Bovarksi, who helped direct the purges and trials of the early 1950s.

Their first targets were the extreme left wing of opposition. They claimed to have uncovered • a "Trotskyist plot' involving 19 youth, members of the Revolutionary Socialist Party.

These young revolutionaries were accused of being part of an 'anti-state tendency' and being 'anti-socialist' But one defendant. lan Frolik, told the court: 'Never in our discussions did we consider the possibility of a capitalist restoration. On the contrary our only aim was to help socialism. Our criticism was not directed against the socialist system, but against certain action and certain methods' Their trial, in March 1971, was conducted great secrecy. No quotations tron the 'seditious' material they were alleged to have distributed was released.

Peter Uhl, the 29-year-old leader of the group, sentenced to four years and the others to lesser terms.

It is now clear the job of the Soviet secret police experts' was to bring all the elements together for a major frame-up trial of the Dubcek tendency.

However, such a task could not be approached head-on in Stalin's word was absolute law. unlike the 1950s when Husak and the Soviet Stalinists still had to reckon with the Czechoslovak workers, who posed the most stubborn of all obstacles to 'normalization'.

However, the Soviet 'experts' set about preparing the ground, aided by their Czech stooges. In March, 1970, Dubcek and several other leading opponents of the occupation were suspended from party membership.

This was accompanied by attacks in the press ominously comparing them with the oppositionists of the 1920s and 1930s who were purged by Stalin in the Moscow Trials.

In May, hardline Stalinist MP Zdena Dohnalova demanded tough action against the opposition in parliament: 'Why have the counter-revolutionary and anti-socialist forces not been punished up to now?' she asked.

In a speech two months later, Husak reassured the ultra-Stalinists that the opposition would not go unpunished:

'As Gottwald [the old Czech Stalinist leader who staged the Slansky trial] used to say, "brother or not come down from the pear tree". The weight of the law will strike Top left: Jan Palach. Bottom left: tI photographs-Dubcek and Preside in April 1968, and the same pictul Dubcek who was the centre of th the invasion. Top right: tanks i in Dubcek. Right: Husak. the violator of the law and this could not, as a matter of fact, be otherwise.' This led to speculation in western papers about a possible trial being prepared in Prague. The French paper 'Figaro' named Jiri Hochmann, Jan Tesar, and chessmaster Ludek Pachmann as likeiy defendants in such a trial.

The prediction was clearly all too accurate, only the timing was wrong. The bureaucracy had to wait almost two years before fulfilling 'Figaro's' prophecy.

In the process it cynically 'updated' the charges against Tesar in order to make it he old Stalinist method of falsifying int Svoboda in Wenceslas Square re retouched and reissued to omit le 'liberalization' which brought on Prague, August 1968. Above left:

seem he was being tried acts unconnected with August events.

It was not until July 1971 that the first of the threatened men were actually brought to trial. The first victim was Vladimir Skutina, a former commentator for Czechoslovak He was sentenced to two years' jail for 'slander and agitation' in Prague then retried in a provincial court on charges of incitement and defaming the Republic'.

The provincial court awarded him an additional two years and two months in He was also banned from working in the mass media for a further three years after his release. He was convicted on the basis of two unpublished pamphlets against the 1968 invasion.

To rub home the significance of this trial, the Czech Communist Party chose the same week to readmit a number of hard-line Stalinists of the Novotny era, including the former Minister of the Interior at the time of the Slansky frame-up.

Folinwino the nresidential This, in reality, " vas the green light for the trial. Now it was im possible for the workers to lega ally protest or lift a finger aga linst the attacks on their former leaders. Strikes or demons strations against the frame-up c :ould be treated with the 'full r igour of the law, , as Husak: had repeatedly warned.

On the basis of the : indictment against the present defendants it is not possible to judge whether they actually carried out the acts t hey are charged with. The Prague Stalinist press is already condemning the defendants before the trial is over. 'Rude Pravo, the Communist Party newspaper, published the following dispatch earlier this week after the trial's opening: "The remnants of the defeated right have not come to terms with the fact that our society under the leadership of the party has successfully overcome the unfavourable results of the crisis years of 1968-1969. 'Several defeated rightist exponents ... are continuing major establ and y bility must they held 1 crimir RiB. succe: muzzl the a voked outsid open Freed calls Califo Pragu autho visas attenc It : a se burea to us our o An the di their public matic meast pathia ity of our citizens to lish a firm legal order, who with blind incorrigiwish to harm our society, count on the fact that will come into conflict our laws and will also be fully responsible for their nal activities.' ¡ht down to the invocation ever more convincing sses' achieved under the les of Soviet guns this is uthentic language of the : judicial frame-up. e trial has already pro1 protests both inside and le Czechoslovakia. An letter from the Citizens' om Movement in Prague upon US Communist member Angela Davis, was recently the victim of attempted frame-up in ornia, to attend the le trials and use her rity to demand entry for foreign journalists to i them as well. says: 'Your victory over : emingly all-powerful ucratic machine ... is a source of inspiration in ›wn struggle.' d it ends: 'Unlike you, efendants cannot hope for I or material support from countrymen because any c expression of sympathy their cause would autozers, against such sym. ally result in police Miss Davis' reaction is not recorded, but the defendants can certainly expect no assistance from the leaders of the British Communist Party, who claim to oppose the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

On Tuesday the 'Morning Star' simply printed a full Reuter report of the trial without comment of any kind. The paper made no demand for the release of the prisoners or for an end to the frame-up.

This is in line with the CP leaders' attitude during the Slansky frame-up of 1953. At that time, for example, Monty Johnstone, now the party's leading 'liberal' wrote: "Slansky, former general secretary of the Czech CP, and associates were found guilty of spying and sabotage for the US and its satellites. Many people were shown to have acted as spies in the labour movement since the pre-war days • . . Such activities can and must be rooted out in this and other countries whenever this takes place; through the vigilance of the workers the movement is rendered stronger and healthier.' The shamefaced British Stalinists of today prefer to hide behind the 'objectivity' of press agency reports.

However much they try to hide, they remain accomplices in the crushing of the Czech opposition.