[Vyjádření k začátku druhého roku působení Charty 77 (anglicky)]

78/002 (780102–2)

In these days we are starting the second year of existence and activities of the Charter 77. Our first goal is, since the very beginning, not a political action in a pure technical meaning, but to express a moral call to every citizen, it means to represent a challenge to every member of the society to change his views and his life. We don’t call the people to sign, but to do something meaningful for the others, especially for those who are discriminated. In a sense, we can consider our activity as a political one, too, but only if we understand the word “political” and “politics” as derived from the Greek word “polis”. We realized that the technical politics of power and violence is something destroying the very foundings of each society. We imagine therefore that the sphere of legitim and legal interventions of the state should be everywhere on Earth and especially in our own country limited and, on the contrary, the sphere of free activities of every man should be enlarged and deepened. We observe as an important fact that the heaviest pressure is exercised on intellectuals in most of the countries of Eastern Europe. But we know that such nonconform intellectual groups are only representing the millions of other citizens who are perpetually being deprived of their future. Most of the public documents of the Charter 77 called for attention how thousands of students, poets, writers, artists, men of science, politicians etc., but in a similar way millions of other men are deprived of their basic freedoms and of their human and civil rights. We wished to throw full light to the situation of different groups and sections of our citizens; up to these days we referred to the situation of our schools and students, of our literature and the silenced writers, about the general conditions of the working men, about the pop music etc., and of course to individual cases of illegitimate and illegal acts of different authorities against several persons.

We are convinced that such cases exist probably in each country, of course on various levels and in various extent. Therefore we feel deep solidarity and understanding for similar groups in other parts of the world, and hope to find similar feelings for us on their own side. No peace is possible in Earth where suppressed people exist; we cannot really be free when our neighbour suffers from violence.