Jáchym Kaplan

"I remember that when we were arrested with the Charter 77 folks during the Palach week and I was in the cell, I was taken again from the Náprstek Museum in a car with four officers, including 'my' Captain Svoboda, two officers in the back seats on to my left and right, and they handcuffed me, which they sometimes did. I said, 'Why are you treating me like an accused?' One officer said to me, 'Don't worry, it won't take that long and you will be coming to get us.'"

"However, when I went to Petřiny to get my exit permit for my passport and visa, there was a huge queue there, like for two hours. Lots of people, the queue was moving slowly, and when it was my turn, the queue got stuck for about 40 minutes. I thought, what the hell, what's going on, and suddenly I see our duo Jančařík - Kopecký walking through the waiting room. They didn't pay any attention to me, walked into the office for a while, then they left, and then a gentleman came out and said, 'Look, I don't know what you've done, but I have to confiscate your passport.' He opened it for me, and there was this red stamp, 'Passport withheld'."

"It got dark. The protest began at three, and it was six or seven. It was getting dark, and as we were going to Wenceslas Square with us of NMS at the front, about 10 of us, suddenly police trucks and cars drove at us from Jugmannova where the Laterna Magika is, like this square. Plainclothed officers ran in and it was obvious they wanted to cut us off from the crowd. Chaos ensued, and then I saw five plainclothed guys throwing themselves onto my colleague Jan Chudomel. One grabbed him by the neck, one by the hand and they were dragging him away. He started yelling for help. I thought: You can't harm them; that would be a crime. I jumped in, grabbed one officer by his shoulder and pushed him away. I got hit in the head with a baton immediately, passed out, and when I came to minutes later, a police officer was kneeling on top of me and spraying pepper spray in my eyes."