Word: palach
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...since the day Warsaw Pact forces crushed the reform movement that flowered in the spring of 1968. So it was hardly surprising that he was arrested on Jan. 16, along with eight other activists, while trying to lay flowers in Prague's Wenceslas Square. That was where student Jan Palach set himself ablaze two decades earlier to protest the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia...
...hypocrisy of the Czech regime. That day, baton-wielding police used tear gas, water cannons and dogs against 4,000 ^ people who were about to begin a peaceful demonstration in Prague's Wenceslas Square. The rally was called to mark the 20th anniversary of the death of Jan Palach, a student who set fire to himself in protest against the 1968 Soviet- led invasion...
...Friday, police had quelled the protests and banned a memorial planned for the weekend at Palach's birthplace, in a village about 20 miles north of Prague. Government officials assailed the rallies as antistate provocation aimed at capturing international attention. Said the Communist Party daily Rude pravo: "The instigators of these actions are intent on destabilizing our society, on pressuring the socialist state." Instigators such as Mikhail Gorbachev, perhaps? Ironically, many of the demonstrators had been chanting "Gorbachev, Gorbachev" and "Gorbachev is watching you," invoking the Soviet leader whose political reforms the Czech leadership claims to support...