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August 22nd, 2008
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A desperate but appropriate protest tactic


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May 14th, 2008 issue

It’s fair to say that the outside world never fully understood the reasons for Jan Palach’s self-immolation in January 1969. From this time and distance, we don’t pretend to, either. What’s clear is that Palach’s spirit was so crushed by the failure and repressive aftermath of Prague Spring that he believed an extreme act was necessary not just to alert the world to what was happening, but to inspire his countrymen. The enormous outpouring of support after he died, and the monuments and tributes that continue to this day, suggest that his judgment was correct — at least within the borders of this country.

Put in that context, the decision by two local activists to start a hunger strike in protest of the radar base is understandable, if quixotic. The stakes may not be as high, but the self-destructive tendency that drives people desperate to make their voices heard has both resonance and history in the Czech Republic.
If not the method, the principle of this hunger strike seems to us exactly right: The Czech people should have a say in the radar base decision. While democracy does not guarantee citizens a voice in every single governmental decision — leaders are elected, after all, to make those decisions — the government’s arrogance on this matter has been breathtaking. Even a perfunctory nod to the voters has been completely ignored while Czech officials jet off to the United States for private tete-a-tetes at the White House, where deals are cut in private.
While the protests against the radar base have been relatively small, they cannot be dismissed as the work of fringe groups. Polls have consistently shown two-thirds of Czechs opposed to the installation. Even a recent STEM poll worded so as to focus the issue on missile defense rather than the radar base found 52 percent in opposition.
So it’s not surprising that Czech leaders are unwilling to hold a referendum on the radar base, which might well upset what they’re already treating as a fait accompli. Unless lives are at stake. It’s a dangerous gambit by the hunger strikers, but once again, one that strikes us as exactly on point. One of the principal objections to hosting the radar base is that it will put Czech lives in jeopardy. The hunger strike dramatizes that objection and moves it to the fore.
The Czech people have experience with something else: being sold down the river by political leaders, most notably in the case of the pro-Soviet faction of 1968. That may be an outsized analogy, but the extreme tactic of a hunger strike suggests that as the radar base controversy intensifies, Czech leaders would be well-advised to keep their own history in mind.


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