Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
234 Ford House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-6460
Rep. Christopher H. Smith, Chairman Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell,

Co-Chairmancsce@mail.house.gov

Gentlemen:

I would like to bring to your immediate attention the case of Petr Cibulka in the Czech Republic and ask your Helsinki Commission to closely examine the lack of progress in the improvement of human rights conditions in Czech Republic.

Mr. Cibulka’s story is as follows: During the eighties, before the fall of communism, Petr Cibulka was one of the leading dissidents from the circle around the current president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel. He was imprisoned three times for a total of over 5 years. Actually during the famed Velvet revolution he was still in prison and was released only after demonstrators formed a human chain around the prison where he was held.

Around 1992 his friendship with then president Vaclav Havel ended abruptly when Petr Cibulka published in his newspaper (and later in a book) a  listing of members and collaborators of the Czech communist secret police (StB), which eventually became known as „Cibulka’s database“. Mr. Havel maintained that the publishing of the names of these communist collaborators was a negative thing to do, and of course Mr. Cibulka’s stand was that the public has the right to know. Publishing information from the communist past was done to various extents in several former communist countries of Eastern Europe, i.e.; in Germany complete secret police files were made available to the public (as opposed to the names of people only in Cibulka’s case).

In the spring of 2000 Czech parliament (since 1990 populated more than ever before by former Communists) voted in a law (no. „102/2000“) about the protection of personal information. The official lame excuse was that the new law was fully in line with current European legislation, but in fact the law was designed to prevent Mr. Cibulka, who in the meantime put the database of the names of the secret police and its collaborators on the Internet, from publishing and otherwise dispersing this information.

The penalty for doing so is a prison term up to three years and financial fine up to 20 million Czech crowns (a financially crippling amount for any individual and most businesses in the Czech republic).

Petr Cibulka already has received a letter from the new established Czech government agency, which will be overseeing only this new law, to appear at their offices and the head of the agency. Karel Neuwirt confirmed on Czech national TV that Mr. Cibulka will be under investigation for publishing the databases. Mr. Neuwirt, as it was just confirmed to me by the wife of Mr. Cibulka, is refusing any contact or communication with Mr. Cibulka’s lawyer.

The Czech Republic has undoubtedly tarnished his reputation when it comes to human rights. Just recently your commission was looking into the racially motivated murders of Romanies in the Czech Republic. However horrible the crimes were, it was still a crime committed by individuals or groups, but what we have here in Mr. Cibulka’s case, is government sanctioned human rights abuse. And it is quite ironic that it is a  government of that famous human rights activist Vaclav Havel.

I would like to compare Mr. Cibulka’s situation to Mr. Simon Wiesenthal’s center for information on Nazi war crimes. Mr. Wiesenthal center is collecting information on Nazi criminals; can you imagine the U.S. or any democratic government would be prosecuting him for that? And that is exactly what the Czech government is doing to Mr. Cibulka.

I am calling on you to take an immediate look into this situation, because Mr. Cibulka is supposed to be investigated this Friday morning, and we certainly do not want him to „commit suicide“ while in the interrogation room or „accidentally fall out of a window“, (as is still possible in these countries) and take a stand in defense of Mr. Cibulka. And let that stand be known to the government and the president of the Czech Republic.

The Czech Republic has to realize that now that they are newly accepted members of NATO, their human rights standards must be substantially upgraded, and that it is no longer possible to manhandle their own citizens as was common amongst Warsaw Pact barbarians.

With regards

Ross Hedvicek