Word: ruml
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...police were frightened enough to rough up Ecoglasnost, which has just 101 members, Bulgarians have no modern model for revolt. That, ironically, might make gradual change easier. Czechoslovakia has such a model -- 1968's Prague Spring -- and authorities there are taking no chances. Two weeks ago, they arrested Jiri Ruml and Rudolf Zeman, well-known editors of the underground opposition newspaper Lidove Noviny. More than 100 journalists, most of them government employees, have since signed a petition calling for the release of the pair and for the immediate legalization of the newspaper. Now the government is hounding playwright Vaclav Havel...
Still facing charges of inciting antistate activities was the most prominent victim of the crackdown so far: Jiri Ruml, 64, editor of the independent monthly newspaper Lidove Noviny (People's News). He and co-editor Rudolf Zeman, 50, were arrested two weeks ago and taken to Prague's infamous Ruzyne prison. They face jail terms of up to five years if convicted under Czechoslovakia's Article 100 law banning most forms of dissident expression. Their continued detention may be the regime's way of closing down the feisty Lidove Noviny (circ. 5,000) as well as of warning protesters...
When I saw Ruml again, two years later, the "Brezhnev winter" had descended on Prague. Ruml, along with 3,000 other journalists, had lost his job and been expelled from the Communist Party. His new career: working as a crane operator with a road gang. Ruml's wife Jirina Hrabkova had been removed as the moderator of a popular radio program, and was selling sausages at the Prague Zoo. Worst of all, their two sons Jan, 17, and Jakob, 15, were hounded out of high school and denied a university education...
...corner stood a typewriter. "It is the fifth in 20 years," he said. The police had confiscated the others in attempts to trace samizdat (underground press) articles critical of the regime. The harassment had brought on an ulcer complicated by other stomach ailments. After multiple surgery in 1980, Ruml was declared an invalid and retired with a monthly pension...
...Only then, the real dance began," he recalls. In 1977 his family had signed Charter 77, a petition that called on the Prague government to observe the 1975 Helsinki accords on human rights. Within a month, all four were arrested and held briefly for questioning. Ruml was frequently picked up by the police in the years that followed, and in April 1981 he and his son Jan were accused of organizing subversive activities, an offense that carries a ten-year jail term. They were kept in different parts of a Prague prison, seeing each other only once in 13 months...