Zdeněk Matuszek

"I went to see the writer Ivan Klíma to get acquainted with the contents of the Charter 77 declaration and to sign it. Apparently, he talked me out of my intention at the time, I was young and my signature would have complicated my future life. When I found out years later that I was not registered among its signatories, I took the first opportunity in 1989 to sign it. Not only did I sign the Charter, I also signed petitions for the release of Václav Havel from prison and a few sentences, which I spread further."

"I didn't finish my studies, I was expelled. I was always a rebel. It was 1977, in January, Charter 77 was founded and a campaign was launched against its signatories. No one knew what the text contained, but everyone protested against it. I didn't like it. Proportionate to my age and capabilities as a seventeen-year-old student, I decided to oppose the regime. In the early hours of the morning, I took portraits of the then president Gustav Husák out of their frames and destroyed them in several classes of the gymnasium. I threw a plaster bust of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin out of a second-floor classroom window and wrote the words Vivat Charter 77 in one-metre letters on the wall of the connecting corridor between the principal's office and the assembly hall. An investigation was launched, the StB was looking for the culprit. I was outed, and as a result I was expelled from the school."

"Thank God for the developments after 1989. What we wanted, we got. There are no borders, we are free to read and listen to the music we like, I am happy. But if someone had told me in 1990, before the first free elections, that after 30 years we would still have communists in parliament, I would not have believed them."