Působení Amnesty International ve prospěch vězňů svědomí v Československu
Amnesty International’s activity in favour of prisoners of conscience in Czechoslovakia

Summary/Abstract: The study primarily focuses on the activity of the international human rights movement Amnesty International in favour of prisoners of conscience in Czechoslovakia from the 1960s to the end of the 1980s, but the text is also supplemented by examples of similar activities carried out by other non-governmental initiatives or, as the case may be, foreign political representations. The pressure of non-governmental organizations, governments and the public in the world to release political prisoners in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and to improve their living conditions in prisons apparently had no influence on the political leadership of the state and the state administration. The actions were ignored on the outside, i.e. they were left unanswered. Nevertheless, specific cases can be found where Czechoslovakia responded to this pressure and criticism, resulting in the easing of the conditions of imprisonment or release. Indirect influence from abroad was demonstrably very significant in the long-term perspective, leading in communist Czechoslovakia both to a change in some of the described cases and to a gradual, increasing carefulness in the treatment of political prisoners and approach to their criminal punishment.

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