NO PRAGUE INCIDENTS

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32382, 22 August 1970, Page 13

NO PRAGUE INCIDENTS

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) PRAGUE, Aug. 21. Czechoslovakia entered its third year of occupation quietly today, with no signs of active resistance against either the occupiers or the Government. But the day, second anniversary of the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion, would be long and anxious as the country’s leaders and its population kept a look-out for any possible eruption of discontent like the one last year in which at least five people were killed.

Around midnight last night, police ordered three East Germans, including a Roman Catholic priest, away from the statue of King Wenceslas in Prague’s Wenceslas Square. The Germans had come to

Czechoslovakia to observe the anniversary, bringing in tribute little bunches of yellow flowers. They left quietly when police ordered them to go, and Czechoslovaks waiting for a train nearby paid no attention to the incident or to the fact that midnight had struck and the anniversary had begun. At midnight on August 21 last year, Wenceslas Square was befogged with patches of tear-gas iter two days of street battles between young people and police. This year, the square was nearly deserted, though closely watched by police. A repetition of last year’s violence was not expected. The test of the regime of Communist Party leader, Dr Gustav Husak, will be whether the public heed a leaflet appeal for a boycott of shops, cinemas, theatres and newspapers and a voluntary 7 p.m. curfew tonight. Even if the boycott proved largely successful, Dr Husak could claim —because of the absence of violence—a victory for his policy of strict authoritarianism plus reconciliation, victory for the normalisation process demanded by the Russians after they sent their troops to Czechoslovakia.

An explosion would mean these policies have not worked but the party leadership and the public seemed confident that there would be no untoward incidents.

Few precautions against a major outburst were taken. The city, its suburbs and the surrounding countryside were devoid last night of tanks or water cannon or truckloads of troops, who could be called in to quell a riot Olive-green Army utility vehicles, under the command of police officers but manned by soldiers, cruised the streets through the night but saw little to attract their attention.

Police patrolled the streets in groups of two and three, and police guards outside the radio studios were reinforced by soldiers carying carbines. Lights were burning in the party central committee building yesterday evening, shortly

after Dr Husak returned from a Warsaw Pact summit meeting in Moscow. Presumably, he and other party officials were discussing the anniversary and what to

I do about it The lights were t turned out well before midnight, and the country's lead- * ers, like its people, appar- ; ently went home to bed to > wait for the critical morning.