What's clear to all is that an international gathering of teenagers for a music festival should not in any civilized country turn into a violent scene with water cannons and tear gas grenades in play and dozens of youths and police injured. And that the fracas at the concert July 30 in the west Bohemian village of Mly´nec could easily have been prevented by reasonable restraint and professionalism on both sides. In the absence of these, the globally transmitted images of the police raid and subsequent protests at Prague's Interior Ministry have been an international embarrassment.

President Václav Klaus, who himself kicked the Respect world music festival off Prague Castle grounds, is now holding forth on the appalling treatment of festivalgoers by an appointee of the administration of his political opponents, the Social Democrats.

Interior Minister Frantisek Bublan, a former dissident who knows firsthand the danger of a police state, has made little effort to apologize for the excessive police response to what is a common event throughout Europe in summer months and has been for decades. Rather, he has said, bizarrely, that such gatherings are not allowed in other countries, a situation that puts the Czech Republic in danger of becoming a haven for them unless a clear message is sent that they won't be tolerated.

This is hardly an example of taking responsibility for a police force badly in need of reform. In fact, it doesn't speak very well of his grasp of reality.

Summer raves fill the meadows of Germany, France, the UK and the Netherlands every year, generally without any fuss or violence. The only difference is that these events are better organized, with permits, insurance, concessions, their own security — and often expensive tickets, bookable in advance, to pay for all of this.

The more recent rave tradition in the Czech Republic embraces anarchy and thrills youthful audiences with the prospect of events that are as spontaneous as possible, their locations only announced at the last minute. A big part of the appeal of coming to a Czech rave is the atmosphere, or illusion, of being outside the system — and, for that matter, the commercial music industry — for at least one weekend in some kind of anarchic environment where the rules of the West still don't really apply.

As the bruised and jailed festivalgoers of CzechTek have now learned, no such world really exists any longer, if it ever did.

The delusion that it might brought 5,000 youths to a hamlet called Mly´nec this year, attending an event whose organizers for the first time in over a decade troubled to obtain permission in advance. That this festival has a history of run-ins with police was most likely part of the appeal to most of the fans.

That does not, however, make them a threat to Czech security. It makes them, or the organizers of the event, a thoughtless mass of trespassers, who, en route to land that they were authorized to use, crossed land they weren't. They no doubt did other things on this land they weren't authorized to do as well.

A professional police force, in responding to property owners' complaints, does not generally try to provoke a mass of excitable youth nearly six times its size. Issuing citations and warnings goes a long way, as do clear rules about what will be tolerated and what won't be, along with liaison and community relations officers.

If, on the contrary, you anger and frustrate such a large crowd, some members of it are very likely to start damaging police property — and possibly police.

Organizers of such large-scale events, for their part, need to take responsibility too — for following the law of their host country, for preventing property damage to people who live near the festival grounds, for the behavior of their guests, for security and hygiene.