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Charter 77

1977 civic initiative in Czechoslovakia

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Through Human rights, United Nations and Right to education

Founding and political aims

Motivated in part by the arrest of members of the rock band the Plastic People of the Universe, the text of Charter 77 was prepared in 1976. The first preparatory meeting took place on 10 December 1976 in Jaroslav Kořán's apartment, and initial signatures were collected.

The charter was published on 6 January 1977, along with the names of the first 242 signatories, which represented various occupations, political viewpoints, and religions. Although Václav Havel, Ludvík Vaculík, and Pavel Landovský were detained while trying to bring the charter to the Federal Assembly and the Czechoslovak government, and the original document was confiscated, copies circulated as samizdat and on 7 January were published in several western newspapers, including Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and The Times, and transmitted within Czechoslovakia by Czechoslovak-banned radio broadcasters like Radio Free Europe and Voice of America. Almost three weeks later, on 27 January, it was also published in The New York Times.

Charter 77 criticized the government for failing to implement the human rights provisions of a number of documents it had signed, including the 1960 Constitution of Czechoslovakia, the Final Act of the 1975 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Basket III of the Helsinki Accords), and the 1966 United Nations covenants on political, civil, economic, and cultural rights. The document also described the signatories as a "loose, informal, and open association of people . . . united by the will to strive individually and collectively for respect for human and civil rights in our country and throughout the world". It emphasized that Charter 77 is not an organization, has no statutes or permanent organs, and "does not form the basis for any oppositional political activity". This final stipulation was a careful effort to stay within the bounds of the Czechoslovak legal system, which made organized opposition illegal.

Many of the organization's activists and members gathered on 29 March 2007 at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, London, to observe the movement's 30th anniversary and to discuss the historical impact their movement generated in modern European politics.

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