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Activist recalls hearing 'blows' and 'screaming' behind bars

Former prisoner sticks to claims, but doubts prosecution possible

By Markéta Hulpachová
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
September 26th, 2007 issue

The Prague Post: How long were you in Minkovice and what were you sentenced for?

Petr Cibulka: I was escorted to Minkovice from the Plzeň-Bory prison, and served there from 1980 to 1981. At the time, Minkovice was the toughest prison on the communist-occupied Czechoslovak territory. I was transferred there as punishment for holding a weeks-long hunger strike in protest of the inhumane treatment in Bory, where I was sent for publishing and distributing prohibited literature and music.
TPP: Several of your prison mates say they were physically abused at Minkovice. Can you describe some of your experiences?
PC: I myself wasn’t beaten up in Minkovice, though I experienced enough of it at Bory and later during my third imprisonment in Horní Slavkov, under Captain Albrecht. I was, however, a frequent witness to beatings in solitary cells, and I often talked about it with the afflicted prisoners. Vondruška’s most frequent victim was political prisoner Jiří Wolf, who hasn’t psychologically recovered from it to this day. The problem is that Vondruška’s commando [subordinate officers] beat people up in solitary cells. We only heard the blows, the wardens’ drunken shouting and the victims’ screaming. Surely this won’t be enough evidence for today’s judges to convict the communist Vondruška and his partners in crime.
TPP: Josef Vondruška says the accusations are an unjust political attack. What is your reaction to this statement?
PC: Vondruška is right. His sudden prosecution and the righteous anger of some politicians and their journalists, who have over the past 18 years turned a blind eye to communist crimes that were a thousand times worse — it’s all a low-cost political production, a show for naive voters. If Vondruška didn’t represent the [KSČM] in Parliament, if he were a [Social Democrat] like, for example, former prison guard Petr Ibl, whom the political prisoners at Ruzyně nicknamed “Bucket,” no politicians or journalists would take any notice.
TPP: What compelled you to inform the police about Vondruška, and why didn’t you do so earlier?
PC: I actually never filed a criminal complaint against Vondruška. [In 2005], I e-mailed accounts of Vondruška’s crimes to nearly 1,000 prominent Czech politicians and journalists. I’ve been doing this with similar cases for years, always to no avail. After 1989, I filed criminal complaints against dozens of StB agents, judges, prosecutors, prison guards and StB collaborators who sent me to prison, where I was beaten like an animal and where I spent five years braving inhumane conditions of communist prisons and concentration camps. Not one of them had been prosecuted. Suddenly, someone found it useful and picked up the phone.
After 18 years, I can say with full confidence that this regime of the criminal elite will never allow for the punishment of hundreds of thousands of communist criminals for the crimes they committed against innocent people, because the politicians themselves could some day be implicated. And so Vondruška and his thuggish commando can remain completely calm.

Markéta Hulpachová can be reached at mhulpachova@praguepost.com


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