Jiří Vaněk (political activist)

Jiri Vanek or Jiří Vaněk (born October 10, 1943 in Prague, Czechoslovakia) is a famous Czech expatriate political activist now living in Sydney, Australia.

In 1978 he was stripped of Czechoslovak citizenship and then forcibly deported from the country of his birth (Czechoslovakia) to Vienna, Austria, from where he left in 1980 for Australia.

His profession was a bulldozer driver. He was one of the first original signatories of Charter 77 and an associate of Václav Havel. He is the only signatory who ever called off his signature while abroad, free and not under duress. He explains this step by his ever growing dissatisfaction with the direction the Charter 77 movement was taking and by his personal disputes with other signatories while in exile in Vienna, Austria.

He described those disputes and his memories of the dissident times in large series of articles, which were widely published in Czech press and on the Czech internet. He has founded several political webpages and forums mirroring his political philosophy and memories.

He is involved in various political causes in the Czech Republic; best known is his support for a former political prisoner of the current Czech regime, Vladimír Hučín, who was recently freed. He is very vocal in condemning the frequent cases of human rights violations in today's Czech Republic.

References

* [http://www.geocities.com/gvanek2000/Bohemia.html Example of Jiri Vanek's webpage]