Petr Mička

"Then it got thicker. We got out of the streets at some point only to find out we couldn't walk on because a police cordon was blocking the street. Those were regular policemen armed with batons, no special units with shields. Still, it was becoming emotional and we were nervous and scared. I vaguely recall that at some point we found ourselves at Wenceslas Square. In any case, a crowd set out from Kampa and at one point we were crossing the Jirásek's Bridge. They closed its one end and sent two yellow police lorries in. The lorries had little windows and from them stuck out hands with batons. The lorries were moving slowly and the policemen who were inside were beating people over their heads. I became really nervous at that point. There was a fantastic girl there with us with purple eyelashes, a real beauty. And she also got almost smacked there."

"Sometime late December a regular uniformed policeman came to see my parents, delivering an order for me to appear for interrogation on the morning of 31 December. Nobody could make any sense of the date and it all. My parents obviously smelled trouble - it meant their son had done some wrong. I didn't tell them what it was about so that made it even worse. They didn't know what would happen but they probably suspected it was related to some anti-regime activities. On 31 December I walked into the station at Kaštanová street in Děčín. There sat a guy who as I realized arrived from Prague just to see me, and it was all clear: you were present at Kampa, describe what took place there. My tactics at that point was to play completely naive, claim that I didn't know what the protest was all about. Which was partially true. I definitely didn't show any courage there because I said I thought it was only about Lennon who was singing about peace - and what is wrong about that after all?"