Release of Ján Čarnogurský from prison in the Bratislava Palace of Justice on November 25, 1989 took place unexpectedly, based on the amnesty of President Gustáv Husákwhich he did not ask for before. Neither his lawyer nor his immediate family knew about the fact that he had just been released. In an interview on the occasion of the anniversary of the events of November 17, 1989, a former dissident, later founder of the KDH and Slovak Prime Minister Ján Čarnogurský.
Husák wanted according to him, the amnesty will weaken the pressure of the demonstrationswhich has been continuously increasing since November 17, 1989. “The warden came to me, he told me to get my things and follow him. We went to the director of the prison, which is located in the Palace of Justice in Bratislava. The director told me that I got amnesty and that I can go home“, Čarnogurský recalls.
According to him, the social atmosphere changed completely in the few months he was incarcerated. “I packed my things in my bag, got on the tram and went home to Dúbravka. One point of the accusation against me was that in July 1989 I was at the rally at the Štefánik monument in Predmieri he demanded free elections. When I went home from prison, the walls of the house were spray-painted with the words: We demand free elections. Everyone was asking for it then,” he said.
When he came home, he found out that his wife was in Prague and she is still fighting for his release from custody. “She didn’t know that I had already been released. She returned home by train late in the evening. The children were at home, the mother-in-law was with the children. We were watching TV, where there was a discussion, in which there were also dissidents, among them Miroslav Kusý, who was already free,” recalls Čarnogurský.
Together with Miroslav Kusý, Hana Ponicka, Anton Selecký and Vladimír Maňák, they were imprisoned shortly after, in August 1989, they called on people to honor the victims of the 1968 occupation by laying flowers on the places where they perished.
However, Čarnogurský had been involved years before, first as a lawyer for dissidents, and later, when he was no longer allowed to practice law, became one of the dissidents himself. Together with Ján Langoš, he participated, for example on the preparation of samizdat Bratislavské listy. According to Čarnogurský, they played an important role in their distribution people from the secret churchwhich was the strongest component of resistance to the regime in Slovakia.
According to Čarnogurský, the defense of dissidents in the context of a totalitarian regime was complicated, but in some cases a lighter sentence could be achieved. “When I defended someone, for example the signatory of the Charter’77 for signing the Charter, I defended in court, but at the same time all the data about the process, who is the judge, who are they prosecuting and for what, they went to the West, to the editorial offices of, say, Free Europe, Voice of America“, remarked Čarnogurský.
These transmitters were in Czechoslovakia at that time although forbidden, but popular among people and in this way they helped create media pressure to support the dissidents. “There were three judges, from that only one professional and two were lay judges. In the usual processes, they came home and the neighbors had no idea what they did during the day. But in these cases, they knew that their neighbors would also know what they borrowed for,” noted Čarnogurský.
Practicing as a lawyer was to some extent an advantage for him even after imprisonment, as he knew that conditions in the prison, as well as its employees. “They knew me and I mostly knew them as a lawyer when I could still go to prison to visit my clients. I knew what not to do and I didn’t do that and they knew what they could not afford towards me,” he recalls the time spent behind bars.
Čarnogurský answers the question of what he sees as the greatest significance of the events of November 1989 simply that he was in the fall of the communist regime. The one according to him systematically violated human rights and lagged behind the West socially and economically. According to Čarnogurský, the Day of Struggle for Freedom and Democracy on November 17 belongs to all Slovak citizens, because in 1989 practically all layers of society gradually joined it.
According to him, the November demonstrations launched by students who took advantage of the fact that November 17 is International Student Day, however, by the time he got out of prison, practically everyone was going to these protests, and the students were in the minority. “That also speaks of the fact that he was already there it really is high time for communism to end“, remarked Čarnogurský.
