The trial of 19 Czech musicians in Prague has been postponed. Most of them are members of the two rock groups - the Plastic People of the Universe, and DG-307. Three others have already been imprisoned for 30, 18 and eight months respectively at a trial in Pilsen on 6 July.
All are charged with 'creating a public nuisance' (maximum sentence but some-like Jirous, artistic director of the Plastic wears.
People-face a combination of charges which could land them in prison eight years. Red Weekly Or NOTO asked IVAN HARTEL, a member of the Committee to Defend Czechoslovak Socialists, why Husak regime should be so afraid of a couple of rock Banes.
'That's a good question. Why is the regime afraid of culture, frightened of words, poems and even of music, one of the least political of arts?
To begin with, in this particular case of mindless oppression it is not really only a couple of rock bands that the regime fears. The two bands on trial are simply the most consistent, most uncompromising and most radical artists from the underground musical movement, and thus the regime probably selected them in deal an exemplary blow to the whole alternative culture movement.
'Four or five years ago the Plastic People provided a focus around which the musical underground developed but by now they are just one of many bands comprising There are at least ten other groups dealing in the most varied musical there are hundreds of active, -TOTTO. creative participants, and many thousands of supporters all over the coun try.
Ivan *This alternative cultural movement has got many facets, and the actual musical underground is only one of them. Unlike many other more ostentatious dissident activities, this particular movement not only cuts right across the present social scale in czechos ovakia. out to and speaks for those with whom no-one else is concerned the most underprivileged strata of Czechoslovak society, namely the young why is it workers *The music and songs of the underground often express the utter frustration of lite in a totamaran, socialist and in effect counter-revolutionary society, plagued with ficially re-euced values, and the blind consumerism that is supposed to compensate for the absolute lack of control one has over one's own life. They express the need for freedom, for truth and for unover To prostituted ethical values, and in this respect they speak for Czechoslovak society as a whole. movement.
They are afraid of workers They are afraid of party members but it also reaches They are afraid of those outside the party They are afraid of science They are arrard or art They are afraid of books and poems They are afraid of painters and sculptors They are afraid of musicians and singers They are afraid of typewriters re afraid of letters are afraid of telephones They are afraid to let people out anti- are afraid to let people in anu- They are afraid of the departure of the They are afraid of the right petty bourgeois They are afraid of changes in the ruling cucue in moscow They are afraid of their own police They are afraid of historians They are afraid of economists They are afraid or parosophers are afraid of physicians They are afraid of political prisoners