Demonstrators Block Way To Legation

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31765, 23 August 1968, Page 17

Demonstrators Block Way To Legation

(New Zealand Preet Auociatlan)

WELLINGTON, August 21. The police cleared a path through demonstrators at the entrance to the Soviet Legation in Wellington tonight for the Soviet Minister’s car.

Earlier in the evening a group of university students staged a demonstration outside the Embassy in Karori. The students handed an Embassy official a note protesting against the invasion of Czechoslovakia. About 30 demonstrators, carrying placards and a Czech flag, hastily pinned together from pieces of red, white and blue cloth, had been waiting outside the embassy for several hours for a meeting with the Russian Minister (Mr B. Y. Dorofeev). The group’s spokesman, Mr B. Mitcalfe, former chairman of the Committee on Vietnam, said that if the demonstrators did not get a chance to present their views to the Embassy tonight, they would demonstrate again tomorrow morning.

Included in the group was a Czech, Mr A. J. Vondruska,

who has been in New Zea. land since 1951. He carried a placard reading: “Czechoslovakia—showcase of socialism —-why must it be destroyed?” Now a New Zealand citizen, Mr Vondruska said he would still be a Czech if a Government similar to Mr Dubcek’s had been in power in 1948.

All the police in Wellington who were On duty tonight were on standby in case of serious trouble at the Russian Embassy. Even the police on duty at the Town Hall wrestling were equipped with, portable transistor radios so that they could be called back at short notice.