Czech academic arrested

Press, 11 October 1979, Page 8

Czech academic arrested

[NZPA-Reuter Prague I A Czechoslovakian philosopher. Julius Tomin, who[has organised an underground (university for students bar-, [red from higher education, [has been confined to a psyjchiatric hospital, informed [Czechoslovak sources have [said. I They said he was picked up ;by the security police on Friiday but his wife was given word unofficially of his' 'whereabouts only on Monday. ! Mrs Tominova. a spokesI woman for the dissident Charter 77 human-rights movement, was hoping for

permission to visit her husband. Professor Tomin's "Jan Patocka University” was ■named in honour of one of the Charter movement’s first 'spokesmen who collapsed (after a lengthy police interrogation early in 1977 and died later in a hospital. Several visiting academics, from the West have given lectures at the unofficial university. One of the most recent was a Norwegian professor of economics, Thorofl Rafto. who was detained for several hours after police, broke up a class he was to ' address. After being ques-i Honed he was put on a train for East Germany.

Professor Tomin was sacked from his post at the an- , cient Charles University after the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia to crush liberal reforms in 1968. Dissidents said Mr Tomin’s arrest is the latest move in a tough crackdown on members of Charter 77. . Charter 77 is a document with 1000 subscribers calling lon Czechoslovakia’s- Communist Government to honour human-rights commitments made at the 1975 European security and co-operation summit meeting in Helsinki. Finland. The dissident Palach Press in London, meanwhile, had more news yesterday on six

-of the 10 members of the , - Charter 77 movement’s Com-’j -imittee to Defend the Unjust- < lily Prosecuted, known as,; - V.O.N.S. The six, including the la- i > mous playwright, Vaclav Ha- • i vel. were arrested on May 29 I -and are awaiting trial in '. Prague for alleged subver- i t sion of the republic. Palach ( > Press said indictments ' - against the six had now been 1 ■ handed to the chairman of; I ; the Prague Municipal Court. H i It said that although de- £ i fence lawyers had not yet ■ received the indictments, , move suggested that the trial, \ I already postponed once, was f enow imminent.