Ing. Petr Uhl

"In the evening or the next day, Jirka Němec came and said, 'Why weren't you there?' So I explained it to him, it was a serious reason [Visiting Jaroslav Sabata, just released from the prison] He said, 'Well, but we'll meet again in two or three days, are you coming?' I said, 'You know I do.' He said, "I'll bring you a text tomorrow, we asked Václav Havel to write it, and we will discuss the text." This discussion took place on a street, we were afraid our flats are being monitored, which was true. "It is supposed to be such a manifesto, we want to establish a community." He really brought it in two days and we, when were hanging the diapers. In March, Saša Uhlová was born as the second child of Charta, the first child of the Charta was Kristýna Dienstbierová. She was born already in January. Of course, I count only the most active people in the Charta. We were in the attic, hanging the diapers, my wife had read it in the apartment before, and she told me in the attic that she thought it was very good, but she thought it should not be one speaker, but three. I said preliminarily that I know that they have fallen for Jan Patočka, Václav Černý and Jiří Hájek. And that they choose between them. And I'm participating in that selection. She said, "But there should be three, those spokesmen, to distract the StB. One person will be under a lot of pressure and in isolation. And it should be someone younger, I would mean Václav Havel. '

"The Charta experienced the most difficult period after our imprisonment in May 1979, 10 people I have already named closed. It was an attack on the VONS, but also on the Charta. Some people [from the Charta] agreed to end, interrupt their activities, wrote a statement on it, but they never issued it, and then it was forgotten, fortunately. This was the most critical moment in the summer of 1979. On the other hand, I was in custody at Ruzyně, I was taken to such a backyard for half an hour a day. There was a cubicle without a roof in the fresh air, maybe 3x5 meters. Once, it was sometime in June, I saw on wooden door, the walls were made of mortar and stones, so there was nothing to write on them with, but the doors were wooden ... Someone carved with a stone into that door: "12 new members joined VONS ´. I believed it and it was true, I was relieved. I felt much better. We all clung to whether Charta would continue, whether the sacrifice - imprisonment is a certain sacrifice, when one goes to prison and knows in advance that one can get there, and does it despite the circumstances- that it had a meaning, that it wasn't for nothing. It was the most critical period of the Charta, but I did not experience it personally. "

"Rumors were going through Prague that a student had been killed there. The rumor came to us in a very tangible form the next day. Drahomíra Dražská, who was such a slightly dark figure, was then investigated, but the military prosecutor's office learned nothing. They did not find out her true motives, except, as the Federal Assembly's commission of inquiry described, as suffering from chronic lying. Drahomíra Dražská testified to the Payne brothers, Petr Payne and Jan Payne, the brothers of the more famous Jiří Payne. They recorded it on a tape recorder. They came to our apartment, there were about 5-6 people, Petr Pospíchal, Honza Urban, my wife, me and others. They played us the tape and based on that statement... We distanced ourselves from that source, we considered it an unverified news, but we made an announcement, that a student Martin Smid was killed. I typed it on a typewriter in French, suddenly, someone from ADP called. I read it in French and said something about it, then we received a call from the Free Europe. I spoke in Czech about it there. Because they had it from two sources-AFP and me- which in fact weren't two sources, they published it. And thanks to Vaclav Benda, who's son studied at MatFyz, we came to the conclusion, that this information is most probably false.

"It was all the war tricks of the State Security. They had a lot of them. I'm sorry to return to the StB. She has long been the kind of institution I have met daily. Their trick - so that the viewer knows that they had different - for example, for example in case of Karel Bartosek, it was to buy a casket, transport it to the 4th floor to a rest area in their house and put the inscription 'Karel Bartošek', his date of birth and the date of that day as the date of death. And when his children left school and got out of the elevator, they saw it. Do you understand? This is nothing that can be punished according to the laws at that time, but also according to today's laws. But the secret police, the State Security, the secret service just shouldn't do that! They cannot do such things, if the reality should be at least reminiscent of life in a democratic state."

"Antonio Gramsci, who influenced me a lot, I read it in French and in Czech translation, because he was published in the 1960s, he wrote his whole work in the prison. I learned the motto from him: "Only the truth is revolutionary." That means, it wasn't true, but it wasn't false either, because I believed it is true, that thing about the student Martin Smid. But when I was released from the prison, where I was less than a week, and I came to Letná the next day, the first thing I did was that I apologized for the false information. I said that of course I considered it true. And the crowd - there were a hundred thousand people or how many - began to chant: "Never mind, never mind." So after this discharge, I have nothing to add. "

"Above all, I had been ostentatiously followed for three quarters of a year just before my imprisonment. It was a tracking mode that sometimes manifested itself by walking two meters behind me, trying to listen to what I was saying to who I was going with. Sometimes they jumped in front of me and photographed us. And of course they came, in uniform, a policeman asking for my ID card! To the man who went with me. "-" Did the people who met with you, they bothered them too? "-" They called them for questioning, for example. When I was officially followed, my wife told all the acquaintances we met, where we went to visit, that we would be happy to come there if they put up with the two gentlemen standing behind me, but not going inside. They respected the liberty of housing, they represented a "democratic state". Someone forgot about it and said, 'I haven't seen you in a long time, come in! You have friends with you, take them too. 'I said,' Don't be angry. They are not friends, they are members of the State Security, and they will stay here. '

"Those signatures were not signed on that paper, by no means. But on a special piece of paper on which it was written: 'I agree with the declaration of Charta 77 of 1 January 1977, signature.' I asked - and it did not pertain everywhere - that the signature was a signature, under the name and surname in capitals, I recommended that there be no academic degree, however this suggestion was not succesfull, it is another Czech custom that is driving me crazy. And I also recommended dating the signature, because of history. Only the ones I picked up are dated, it can be seen that they are from me, but it's not certain, these leaves were supposed to be gathered at Havel, the 29th or 30th [December 1977]. I didn't organize it, so I didn't know that 15 people would come in! Not only the seven with the cards.The problem was that Zdeněk Mlynář, who had three, he demanded that he wanted three [presumably papers with the text of the Charter declaration] that he had a large circle of excluded communists who will be interested in it, I want three, I had one with Komeda, one had Jiří Němec - and he said to me: 'I will not give it to everyone to sign, I will only give it to Magor from the underground.' I persuaded him to discount, and the other two were kept by artists, Havel ... they gave it to other people who collected the signatures, too. Otka Bednarova and Andula Marvanova and Jiri Dienstbier sr collected signatures for Mlynar. Andula Marvanova, I know abou that, no historian found out about that, they just were not interested. Andula Marvan said: "If you want, it will be saved and it will not be published. This is how we will mark it to not published and we will put it separately." 40 people agreed to that, I believe, historian Petr Blažek claims that 20 people. They put it in an envelope and drove it in the same car as the signatures for publication, and they were already rewritten. I don't know who they wanted to give them to, why they transported the papers? To themselves? So... Mlynar arrived an hour later, and he had three papers. I said to myslef: We are in danger. There were almost no excluded communists. The people, who were approached by me in Prague and Komeda in Brno, among them were a few excluded communists- e.g. Jaroslav Sabata, but the majority was not there. But Mlynar arrived an hour later, and he brough around 100 signatures from this environment. Then it happened when we counted the signatures with Pavel Blažek, he claims that almost half were from former communists, I told him: 'You know that Egon Bondy is one of them, that Bondy was KSC and that Vohryzek was in KSC until 1949? ' So we found about two more and it was exactly half, 121 former communists. "