Yesterday I found

 

Yesterday I tried to eliminate unimportant items from the pile on my windowsill and piles in my drawers, and so I found a slender cutting from The Daily Telegraph of Wednesday April 5, 1989:

Czech refugee starts 10-day hunger strike

                            By R Barry O’Brien

DR JULIUS TOMIN, the Czech dissident who won fame for his underground philosophy classes in the 1970s, has written to President Gorbachev and Mrs Thatcher seeking their help in regaining his lost Czech citizenship.

He is starting a 10-day hunger strike at his loggings in Oxford today in support of his plea for the restoration of his citizenship, taken away from him after he came to Britain in 1980.

In his letter to Mr Gorbachev he writes: “May I use the opportunity of your visit to Britain to express support for glasnost and perestroika in your country and to protest against the lack of both in Czechoslovakia.”

The letter says the law under which he lost his citizenship was enacted after five Warsaw Pact powers invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 and so is partly the responsibility of Russia.

Dr Tomin, who has become a 5,000 a year visiting philosopher to the Beehive public house in Swindon because he has been unable to get an Oxford post, tells Mrs Thatcher he is grateful to Britain for giving him refugee status.

“If you would find time to bring to Mr Gorbachev’s attention the situation in Czechoslovakia, well exemplified by the case of my being deprived of Czechoslovak citizenship, my 10-day hunger strike will obtain meaning that nothing else and nobody else could convey to it.”

Dr Tomin, 50, a prominent signatory of Carter 77, the manifesto of the Czech human rights movement, undertook three hunger strikes in Prague in defence of human rights in 1977-78.

He lost his citizenship after a newspaper interview in Britain in which he said that Poland’s Solidarity movement would put heart into Czech workers.

In 1985, after five years in Britain, he wrote to the Czech Embassy asking what he could do to have his citizenship restored.

“They replied that like any other foreigner I might apply for an immigration visa to Prague and that within half a year they would give me a reply,” he said.

***

I found the cutting in the night, during one of my waking sessions. The last two paragraphs filled me with amazement and disbelief. “It must be true; Barry O’Brien gets his data right. But I just can’t remember it.” With that I fell asleep. It was only now, almost twenty-four hours later – its five past midnight, as I look on my watch – as I was typing it, it all came back to me.

After the visit of Dr Kenny, Master of Balliol, in my seminar – his lecture was interrupted by the Secret Police, Kenny and his wife were the first to be taken away. As I learned later, after a lengthy interrogation, in the night, they were taken to the border crossing in Rozvadov. On foot, with all their luggage, they had to cross the border to get to the West Germany.

After Kenny’s visit, each Wednesday, the police took me and my students for 48 hours to police custody – my seminars took place on Wednesday evenings. When this happened three or four times, during a police session before my 48 hours police custody, I asked a police officer: “I should like to go for five years to study at Oxford, what can I do about it?” The officer replied: “Five-year study at Oxford? Mr Tomin, if you want to emigrate, you and your family may leave within a week.” I said: ‘I am not going to emigrate.’

Some ten days later, I was visited by Daniel Kummermann, one of my students (I hope I got his name right): ‘Mr Tomin, I was summoned to the police. When are you going to ask for the five-year study in Oxford? They want to know.’ A fortnight later I was visited by Ivan Dejmal, another of my students: ‘Mr Tomin, the police want to know, when you are going to ask for your five-year study leave.’

I wrote to the Embassy at the termination of those five years.