Man sets himself alight on Wenceslas Square

The Czech Republic was in shock on Thursday after a nineteen-year old man set himself alight on Prague's Wenceslas Square, close to where Jan Palach immolated himself in 1969 in protest against the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. From a letter left by the man on the internet, it appears that today's incident is also a political protest.

Photo: CTK

Just after 7:30 this morning, a nineteen-year old man doused himself with petrol and set himself alight in front of the National Museum on Prague's major thoroughfare, Wenceslas Square. Police have identified the man as Zdenek A. from Humpolec, a town in southeastern Bohemia approximately halfway between Prague and Brno.

The immolation occurred during the rush hour for Prague commuters, and dozens of people witnessed the scene. Two passers-by tried to put out the fire with their jackets, one of them was a plainclothes policeman. Firefighters and rescue workers arrived on the scene shortly after, and they took Zdenek A. to a nearby hospital in the Vinohrady quarter. They tried to resuscitate the man for forty minutes, but he died on the way to hospital. Marek Uhlir is a press spokesman for the emergency services:

"Two of our crews and three of our doctors hurried to the scene. The man was still alive then, and they tried to resuscitate him. They fought for his life very hard for forty minutes, but unfortunately he died in the end. He died of very grave burns all over his body, and of the resulting shock."

Photo: CTK

Just hours after the incident, the Minister of the Interior, Stanislav Gross, said that the man killed himself in protest against the situation in the Czech Republic. Zdenek A. left a suicide note outside the National Museum and a letter on the internet, in which he gave his action the name "Torch 2003." In the letter, he calls his action " a continuation of the protest against the evil which is universally tolerated all over the world." He writes that his protest is against the spread of violence and war, the destruction of the environment and what he regards as a lack of democracy in the Czech Republic. "Drugs, violence, money and power. They are the main mottos of this civilisation, " writes Zdenek A. in the letter placed on the internet.

The resonance of today's self-immolation with that of Jan Palach was also intended by Zdenek A.: in his letter he writes that the first wave of protests was begun by Jan Palach and others, when they set themselves on fire to protest against what they said was widespread apathy in Czechoslovak society following the 1968 Soviet invasion.