Volume 27, Number 9 · May 29, 1980
Apartment in Prague
By Anthony Kenny
At 8:15 on the evening of Saturday, April 12, I was conducting a private seminar on Aristotle's Ethics in the apartment of Dr. Julius Tomin in Prague. Five minutes later the meeting was surrounded by uniformed and secret policemen, and the seminar, which had lasted just over an hour, was brought to a premature end. Of the twenty-three people present the three foreigners (myself, my American wife, and a visiting French mathematics teacher) were taken off to one part of the police headquarters in Bartolomejska Street. Eighteen of the Czech citizens, including Dr. Tomin, were detained in another part of the same building, and two Czechs were allowed to return home. We foreigners were deported to Germany after being interrogated and held for some eight hours. The Czechs were detained for two days and then released with the warning that if they attended such a meeting again they would be charged with an offense under section 202 of the Penal Code. Section 202 forbids hooliganism in public places; offenses against it are punishable with imprisonment of up to two years.
Feature, 2933 words
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