Publication date:
2020/01/17
On 17 January 2020, a commemorative ceremony was held at the Jan Palach memorial plaque at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Jan Palach Square. Jan Palach set himself on fire on 16 January 1969 to protest against normalization, ie the suppression of freedoms by the Communist regime after the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact troops in 1968. His memorial was honored by CTU in Prague by laying flowers on the plaque.
Jan Palach wanted to awaken the nation from lethargy and arouse it to resist the emerging normalization. "To protest against everything that is happening here. Against restriction of speech and the press. Tell everyone," the student described the reasons for his deed to a nurse in a hospital where he was taken with severe burns. Another student, Jan Zajic, burned himself on the protest of normalization in Prague on 25 February 1969, following the example of Palach.
