Velvet Recall: ‘We Are Not Like Them’
Velvet Recall: ‘We Are Not Like Them’

Summary/Abstract: A 22-year-old biology student helps lead his country into a new age. A TOL special report. On 17 November 1989, police in Prague cracked down on a student demonstration, triggering 10 days of mass protest and political action that peacefully brought down Czechoslovakia’s communist regime. To mark the anniversary, all this week TOL features prominent Czechs offering their recollections of the Velvet Revolution. Today: human rights activist and former student leader Simon Panek. For more memories of 1989, see the Recollections section of our 20 Years After website http://20years.tol.org/. * * * In 1989, a 22-year-old Charles University biology student, Simon Panek, rose to prominence as a leader of the student strikes that precipitated the Velvet Revolution. Elected co-chair of the Central Students’ Strike Committee, he worked closely with Civic Forum leader Vaclav Havel and was a negotiator in the communists’ hand-over of power. Panek has continued to play an active role in Czech and European civil society, founding the news organization Epicentrum, which specializes in conflict reporting, and the nongovernmental human rights and humanitarian aid agency People in Need. He was a foreign policy specialist in Havel’s presidential administration and chaired the NGO development platform FoRS. Panek received the Czech state Medal of Merit in 2002 and the European of the Year Award in 2003.

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