Fiction that Matters

The photograph reproduced on this poster documents the student demonstration in Prague on the 17th of November 1989. This non-violent protest challenged the authorities who responded brutally. It initiated the events which culminated in the ‘Velvet Revolution’ and the overthrow of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.

The student demonstration began with a meeting in the Albertov district of Prague on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Nazi persecution of Czechoslovak students who had held mass protests during the burial of Jan Opletal (a Czech student from the medical faculty of the Charles University who was shot during demonstrations against the German occupation of Czechoslovakia on October 28, 1939). The Albertov student meeting continued with a ‘march for democracy’ to the centre of Prague. On the way towards National Street the student demonstration was joined by other, mainly young, people demanding freedom and democracy.

This photograph shows demonstrators bravely holding flowers against the truncheons in the hands to the ‘White Helmets’ (as the special troops of the Ministry of Interior Affairs were known). Photographs of the demonstration were printed and circulated in the shocked aftermath of the White Helmets’ brutality.

Designed, printed and published in former Czechoslovakia.

(via fyeaheasterneurope)