STRIKE WIDELY OBSERVED

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31767, 26 August 1968, Page 13

STRIKE WIDELY OBSERVED

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) PRAGUE, Aug. 25.

It was noon in Prague on Friday and the machine-gunner on the Soviet tank in Wenceslas Square nervously looked up at the adjacent roofs and flicked away his cigarette, writes Clyde H. Farnsworth, of the New York Times News Service.

An infantry man crouched by the tank’s revolving turret and cocked his tommy gun. An armoured patrol car rumbled down the square, halted for a moment and then moved on.

The square was empty except for Soviet armour and troops.

Horns blaring all over the city announced the beginning of a one-hour general strike.

Those who did not support the Soviet presence cleared

the streets and this left the Russians completely by them selves. It was a tremendous demonstration of the solidarity of this city against the occupation.

The Russians were visibly nervous, their eyes checking all points for possible snipet fire.

Some of the troops fired their weapons, but it was not certain whether they actually saw any snipers. Apart from these short bursts and the rumble of the patrol cars, the hour passed in silence on the square named for the Czech national hero born a thousand years ago. Prague’s poignant protest, organised by the youth of the city who have spearheaded the generally passive civic resistance. came during the third day of occupation. Long-haired youngsters gathered at the monument to Saint Wenceslas, and announced that the hated police from the regime of Antonin Novotny were now at large.

These men had been arrested under the more liberal regime of Mr Alexander Dubcek, the man who replaced Mr Novotny in January.

One youthful speaker urged the crowd that gathered in the Square after the hour-long protest to tear down all street signs so that the police would not be able to find their way to the homes of those they wanted to arrest.

He also announced, to cheers from the throng, that a train coming from Russia and carrying sophisticated electronic radio directionfinding gear had been derailed 60 miles outside of Prague. The Russians have been trying to locate the clandestine centre of Radio Free Prague, which has provided the chief moral support for the city’s resistance. The speaker also said that buses were being brought to the Square to take all those

who needed potatoes to a freight yard in a Prague suburb where a train loaded with potatoes had just pulled in.

“Get them before the Russians do,” the youth yelled into a loudspeaker. Since the occupation there has been a grave shortage of potatoes in the city.

New posters went up today calling for Czechoslovak “neutrality.” This would mean withdrawal of the country from the Warsaw Pact.

Queues stood before tables set up all over town where neutrality petitions were being organised. Underground leaflets and posters continued to proliferate.

News sheets were dropped from office windows and distributed from cars and trucks that roamed the city decorated with Czechoslovak flags. Some of the posters were stuck to walls right under the mouth of tank cannons. One Russian soldier was seen during the midday protest when the streets were empty ripping a poster showing a red serpent swallowing Czechoslovakia.

It was a day marked by fear of the secret police. Rumours spread that many arrests were being made. Late in the morning, lists suddenly appeared all over the city, scribbled on doorways, in shop windows and on the backs of trucks and cars, giving the licence plate numbers of the cars used by the secret police.

The Russians also began to occupy the hotels in which many foreign tourists had stayed. Most of the tourists had left early in the morning on special trains to Frankfurt and Vienna.

Practically all communications with the outside world were shut down.

Nine out of 10 people walk ing today through the streets were wearing red, white and blue Czech lapel flags. There was an assembly-line production of the tiny flags at resistance centres.

Young girls snipped the tricoloured fabrics from spools of yarn, while other girls pinned the material on to passers-by.