Milan Valiska

* 1952

  • When there is a football match Sparta - Slavia, all the police officers from the Czech Republic will be deployed there and have to guard there. When hockey is in Pardubice and fans from another city come, fifty cars drive with them and a hundred policemen go with them so that they don't do anything. When we have a congress, there is one car, which must be there, the police, and the policemen are resting there, taking a break. Because they know that the congress is a place where there are orderly people, everyone has a tie, everyone has a shirt, a suit and they behave decently. This means that those police and state officials are satisfied when they see that they have our support in this. But some mind that we don't need to support them politically. But we do not support anyone politically. Neither Hitler, nor America, nor Russia, nor China, we are simply neutral. "

  • The bullying can happen everyday. It is for example, when you do not do some things like other colleagues at work, so you are ostracized from that company and you cannot expect your career progression to continue steeply. It's just that we can still see that we're trying to apply the Bible in our daily lives, and that's what makes us different from other people. And that can sometimes be the reason why there is sometimes a certain resentment from those people. When you don't do something like them, when you don't get drunk, slander or cheat, it's bad."

  • "When I closed the apartment door behind me, I suddenly heard a noise in the hallway, on the stairs leading up -the cops who were in the house waiting for me ran down, rang, knocked on the door and then they were inside. So then it all occurred to me. " - "What happened next?" - "Then the Avia came and they started to take everything that was there. Everything book and literature related. Also I learned bookbinding in Trutnov before I went to Prague and I had all the equipment for bookbinding. The press, the knives and all the tools that was needed was confiscated from me. And when they loaded everything into the car, they loaded us into the car and took us to Bartolomějská."

  • "Even though it wasn't like I had to stand in the cold at night in my shorts somewhere in the field, no, but I got the worst jobs." - "Such as?" - "For example, climbing with wood in an ever-shrinking hole that was 40 centimeters wide, working in an area where there were landslides, hard work, night work. But that was part of life for those miners, so I couldn't expect to be there. to walk around in a tie and a white shirt, but I got the worst work that had to be done at that moment."

  • "They took me to Bartolomejska, and there was one, one young man at the interrogation, a boy who - when I was working on that metro - made friends with me there, we quite liked each other and we got along well. Finally, I found out that he was actually monitoring me. When I worked with him, he didn't learn anything from me, I didn't tell him anything, but he continued the interrogation there as my friend. And the other one was unpleasant, he screamed at me, but they didn't find out anything they wanted to know from me. They let me go home after two days. " - "What did they want from you?" - "They wanted to know the names, the addresses where the literature is made, who makes it, who I got it all from. I counted on the fact that the literature I have at home for my purposes is not forbidden, that I can have it, and that was the strongest argument for letting me go. But they didn't return the literature."

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    Hradec Králové, 24.05.2019

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    duration: 01:16:32
    media recorded in project Příběhy regionu - HRK REG ED
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I crawled through on opening that was 40 centimeters wide

Milan Valiska, 2019, current photography
Milan Valiska, 2019, current photography
photo: Milan Valiska, 2019, foceno ve studiu

Milan Valiska was born on July 28, 1952 in Chrudim to a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses. He grew up with his two sisters in Pardubice and after his studies he refused to enlist in the military. Instead, he chose a ten-year service in the Radvanice mines near Trutnov and later on the metro construction works in Prague. There he was monitored by a “secret” [policeman], which he later met at an interrogation in Bartolomějská street. During a house search, the police confiscated a large amount of Jehovah’s Witnesses religious literature from him and his wife, as well as the equipment needed for their production and distribution, yet they were released one day later. After 1989, he would still encounter a similar view of Jehovah’s Witnesses from people, much like during the communist rule.