Tuesday, 19 January 2021

Remembering Czech Student Jan Palach who set himself alight for freedom


 20-year old Czech philosophy student Jan Palach died on January 19 1969 after suffering for three days in hospital from self-inflicted third-degree burns. On January 16 1969, Palach, a quiet student of philosophy standing at the top of Wenceslas Square, at the foot of the steps of the Czech National Museum, poured petrol over his head and lit it on fire, five months after Soviet tanks had rolled into Czechoslovakia to end a swelling reform movement, to protest against the lack of freedom and the passivity of its citizens, hoping to inspire compatriots to stand up to their occupiers,.His act was modelled on the  1963 self-immolation of Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thin Quang Duc in Saigon, protesting at the Vietnam war.
During an interview in the hospital and in his suicide letter, he called for a strike and expressed dissatisfaction with the resignation of citizens toward the regime’s policies.“People must fight against the evil they feel equal to measure up to at that moment,” he managed to say, With 85 percent of his body covered in third degree burns, he passed away in the hospital three days after his self-immolation attempt.He had made the ultimate sacrifice. Palach left a short and succinct suicide note  at the site explaining the motives for his actions. Ominously, he signed his suicide note 'Torch Number One', giving the impression that he was part of a larger group, which in fact  did not exist.
He left a letter at the site explaining the motives of his final act: 

 “As our nation is living in a desperate situation, and its reconciliation with fate has reached its utmost stage, we have decided that in this way we will express our protest and shake the conscience of the nation …ˮ

It did. Following Palach’s self-immolation, many Czechs and Slovaks went on hunger strike; others took to the streets. They insisted that Palach’s calls, expressed in his farewell letters, to abolish censorship and stop the dissemination of the Soviet propaganda publication Zpravy should be heeded.
 In death, Jan Palach would become known as “the conscience of the nation”, hailed as a martyr of exceptional courage and character. He is held up as the national symbol of the Prague Spring, a period of political liberalization and mass protest in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic that lasted approximately seven months, from January 5th to August 21, 1968.  The Prague Spring began with the election of reformist Alexander Dubček as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). In August that year, the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact members invaded Czechoslovakia to suppress the reforms. The week after the invasion saw nonviolent resistance spark across the country, and the beginning of a massive wave of emigration, due to the suppression of speech, media, and many other freedoms. Jan Palach became a symbol of that resistance,
Palach’s funeral at Prague’s Olšany Cemetery on January 25 turned into a huge demonstration of opposition against the Soviet Union's crushing of the liberal reforms of the Prague Spring, attended by at least 200,000 people. Protests and services of remembrance took place across the country, with people shouting anti-communist and anti-Soviet slogans.


The authorities allowed these demonstrations and marches to take place, sensing the need of the people to voice their discontent. But soon, marches were broken up as the regime reasserted its control. Palach’s grave in Prague, which was attracting far too many visitors, had become a shrine adorned with flowers, candles and poems.During October of 1973, without asking the family’s permission, the Secret Police had him cremated and replaced Palach with the body of an elderly lady in the Olšany grave. His ashes remained with his mother in Všetaty. The police would not even allow her to put the urn in the local cemetery until 1974. The Secret Police watched his grave, forbidding followers from placing flowers on Palach’s resting place. Palach’s ashes were transported to Olšany, Prague in 1990. 
Palach wrote in his suicide letter that he did not want others to follow his example. Yet some did not heed his warning. The day after Palach’s death Josef Hlavatý committed an act of self-immolation in front of a memorial to first democratic Czechoslovak president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk in Pilsen. Notably marking a month after Palach’s funeral 18-year old Jan Zajíc, a former friend of Pelach's poured gasoline on himself at Wenceslas Square on 25 February 1969, In his suicide note, entitled ‘Torch no.2’, Zajic wrote:

 ‘I am not doing this to be mourned, nor to be famous, and I am not out of my mind, either. With this act, I want to give you the courage to finally resist letting yourself be pushed around by a few dictators.’

Other deaths by fire took place in Jihlava and Košice. The self-immolation trend was not limited to Czechoslovakia, though. Students in other Communist countries also attempted suicide in this way.It was later copied by a wave of Indian students who set themselves alight in 1990 in protest at changes in quota systems for entry into university and the civil service.In Britain in 1993, Graham Bamford, a 48-year-old former haulage contractor, burned himself to death outside the House of Commons to protest at the horrors of Bosnia. It was later echoed at the start of the Arab Spring revolution in Tunisia, which began after street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in December 2010..
After Palach’s courageous death, however the situation in Czechoslovakia did not improve.His act failed to overturn the consolidation of power by Soviet-backed hard-liners who brought a period of repression that lasted until the end of communist rule in 1989. Th protests and Palach's demands went unheeded. Censorship remained in place and the Soviet occupiers continued distributing, their propaganda publication. Nothing had changed and the Czech and Slovak drifted in apathy,.
Tet Jan Palach;s name  though became a key point of reference in seminal events leading up to the fall of communism, with rallies in his name crucial in mobilising support outside dissent circles.Twenty years later, anti-Communist dissident Vaclav Havel was detained as he laid a flower at the top of Wenceslas Square to commemorate Palach on January 16, 1989, sparking thousands of demonstrators, mainly students,  to flock to Wenceslas Square every day for a week  in what  later became known as ' Palach week.' Lots of people consider these gatherings to his memory to have been a dress rehearsal for the Velvet Revolution the following November that brought down Czechoslovakia's communist regime, which saw Havel  becomming the country's president, with many seeing this as the ultimate testament to Palach's legacy.
Following the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia, a bronze cross honouring both Palach and Jan Zajic was embedded into the ground on Wenceslas Square, as if melting into the pavement, on the exact spot where Jan Palach had staged his desperate protest. A small memorial with Palach’s death mask adorns the façade of Charles University’s Faculty of Philosophy, and the square on which the building is situated is named after him. Squares in Rome and Luxembourg also bear the martyr’s name. Streets named after Palach can be found in Luxembourg, France, Poland, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. There is even a Palach memorial inside a glacier tunnel in Switzerland. 
Palach’s self-immolation has been widely referenced in music, literature, poetry, movies, and other cultural forms.Songs and poems have been written about Palach.The music video for the song “Club Foot” by the band Kasabian is also dedicated to Palach. Written by Charles Sabatos, the book Burning Body: Icon of Resistance: Literary Representations of Jan Palach also carries his memories.  A radio play and a documentary also focus on the Všetaty native. In 1991 President Havel posthumously awarded him a medal for serving democracy and upholding human rights,
He was also immortalised by the 2018 movie named after him, starring Czech actors. The movie is currently available on Netflix in Czech with English subtitles. More information on the movie can be found here.
Palach’s  incredible sacrifice was not in vain. He stood up to the harsh regime while others merely accepted the political situation. He gave his life because he believed in democracy and human rights.Though his immediate political goals failed, Jan Palach inspired and steeled the resolve of countless others to fight for freedom during the two decades of ‘Normalisation’ that followed the crushing of the Prague Spring. And for this he will never be forgotten.

 
 
                                           Jan Palach Memorial, Prague, Czechoslavakia

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