October 12 to become Day of Samizdat

Czechia will mark October 12 as the Day of Samizdat, celebrating the production of illicit printed materials such as books and magazines under the pre-1989 Communist regime, the Lower House of Parliament voted on Wednesday.

On October 12, 1988 a group of 92 Czech and Slovak samizdat publishers wrote an open letter to the then Communist president Gustáv Husák condemning the jailing of one of them, Christian activist Ivan Polanský.

The deputies have overruled the proposal of the Senate to celebrate the day on April 27, which marks the anniversary of the founding of the Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Prosecuted in 1978.