Petra Prokšanová recently won the Julius Fucik International Prize in the category Czech Journalist of the Year 2024 for her outstanding journalistic achievement in supporting and guiding young people in their journalistic work, whether in the daily Haló noviny, where she ran a four-page supplement VIZE mladých, or in the weekly Naše pravda. This is the beginning of the following interview, but it is primarily about much more important events.
This award went quite unnoticed - even in the aforementioned weekly newspaper Naše pravda. What does it mean to you? I mean the award.
It's not every day that a person receives a similarly significant recognition of their work, so I was really pleased to receive this award. And it also motivated me to continue my work. It may sound like a cliché, but nowadays, when you are involved in communist politics, publicly pointing out causes that are inconvenient to the current regime, putting your entire professional and personal life on the line, you cannot expect to live a quiet life of luxury, earn hundreds of thousands and enjoy universal support.
That's why any such encouragement is incredibly important. There is tremendous strength in the strength of those who share their fate with you not only here and now, but there is also a commitment to the generations of past communists who put not only their comfort but also their bare lives on the line in the struggle for a better world. I think of that every time someone pats me on the back and says "good job". That's more than a premium envelope.
This is simply another log in the fire that burns within me to light the torches of the next generations that will come after us to fight for a better world. And I firmly believe that Julius Fučík, whose name the prize bears, felt the same way when he said goodbye to his barely written life in his cell in Plötzensee.
Looking at the names of other award winners - this year's and Last year's - you're in pretty good company, am I right?
Along with me, this year's recipients include the journalist and writer Ivan Černý and Jiří Mařík (editor-in-chief of the Czechoslovak Communist Party - JISKRA and son of Václav Mařík, who chose death by his own hand rather than fall into the clutches of the Gestapo during the Heydrichiad). The award was given to Julian Assange. And also a man whom I respect immensely, and hopefully he will not be offended if I write that I consider him not only a good comrade but also a friend - Richard Knot.
Last year's winners were Stanislav Novotný and John Mark Dougan. Jaroslav Kojzar received a special award for his lifetime contribution. But most importantly, among the awardees there were more foreign personalities of the journalistic world, who are united not only by the fact that they are undergoing persecution in their countries, but above all by their courage in informing the world about the reality they experience on a daily basis. I will mention for all of them the Polish journalist Agnieszka Piwar and the brothers Michał and Aleksander Kononović, political prisoners of the Zelensky regime. You do not read about these people in the mainstream media, even though their lives are in daily danger and they are often kept alive only by the pressure exerted by international solidarity.
The names of the Kononovich brothers came up - I will allow myself to stay with them, but at the same time digress. Is there an event coming up, when, where and why?
On Tuesday, 10 December, International Human Rights Day, we will meet at 5pm at the Ukrainian Embassy in Prague to remind you that Ukraine is facing many internal problems such as censorship, the liquidation of the opposition, corruption... which it needs to deal with as soon as possible if it wants to think about any de facto partnership with anyone in the world after the end of the conflict. These problems were not brought to the country by the war, they are a long-term crisis and it is time to stop ignoring them.
At this event, we want to make a clear statement against human rights violations in Ukraine and express our support for political prisoners, including the Kononovich brothers. Both brothers have dedicated their entire lives to the struggle for peace and social justice in the ranks of the Communist Leninist Youth Union and the Communist Party of Ukraine. After the so-called Maidan, they vocally stood up for a peaceful solution to the smouldering civil war and against the killing of the population in the Donbas. For their activities they were always persecuted and attacked by neo-Nazis and the then Ukrainian regime. After the outbreak of the hot phase of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in February 2022, the two brothers were arrested on March 2 and held for several weeks in the SBU basements, where they experienced inhuman torture, cruel interrogations, humiliation, threats, and even the rape of the underage daughter of one of the brothers. They were accused of espionage and treason. However, the accusations were so absurd that the Ukrainian administration reformulated them several times. At the end of October 2022, the Kononovich brothers were released under continuous house arrest, wearing an electronic bracelet, at the insistence of the international anti-fascist and communist movement. To date, more than a hundred court hearings have been held and three judges have been rotated on the case. Currently, the Kononovic brothers face charges (as do hundreds of others) of attempting to overthrow state power and face up to ten years in prison in a mock trial.
At the same time, we want to highlight the fact that more and more people are deserting the Ukrainian army and that the mobilisation in Ukraine is incredibly violent. Social networks are full of dramatic videos of military police ripping fathers away from crying children and women, or chasing young men at gunpoint and forcibly dragging them into barracks. Yet the only way not to become cannon fodder and avoid punishment is through corruption or illegal migration. And even that costs a lot of money.
I am convinced that we must become the voice of all people forcibly taken to war, the voice of thousands of political prisoners in Ukraine, the voice of the workers there who are fed up with war. We should be heard not only by the Ukrainian authorities, but also by the current Czech Government, which is playing the absolutely tragic role of cheerleader in a US leotard in this conflict. This must stop! No weapons to Ukraine, no support for war, no grandiose statements. Negotiations on a ceasefire and peace should have been held long ago, but every single day that no human being dies for the interests of the oligarchs, mafiosi and corruptors counts.
Do you expect similar reactions as at the recent rally to express clear opposition to the growing fascism in the world in any form at the corner of Petschek Palace in Prague, where "random passers-by" threw a smoke bomb towards the participants, or at the protest against the event at Theatre X10 in Charvátova Street in Prague 1, officially presented as a lecture by Ukrainian soldiers (with an entrance fee of 500 crowns...), when the police present tried to disperse the protest on suspicion that there was a bomb on the spot (this was not confirmed in the end)?
That's right. A lost goose will always call. When you protest against fascism, there are always fascists who either want to explain that you are wrong, or want to intimidate you, or outright eliminate you. I am "lucky" to have been in the most radical anti-fascist circles in my lifetime, and I have had direct experience of violence from various neo-Nazis, fascists, right-wing skinheads, and even immature teenagers who were boosting their self-esteem by inclining towards the right-wing extreme. Their forms of "struggle" have not changed in any way over the years. Anonymous heroes on the internet, but also in the streets, using swear words or smoke bombs as an argument. But that doesn't deter us.
We do not underestimate such events and situations arising from them, we prepare honestly and those who are prepared are not surprised. In addition, the protest is duly announced, so it is to be expected that there will be many police officers, journalists, and even regime-paid tipsters who always try to provoke or bring some scandalous revelations to their benefactors. This is the whole spectacle and it makes me laugh. The real fascists are sitting in expensive blocks somewhere else.
Recently it was November 17th, on this day many remember 35 years ago, but what is being overlooked is what happened 85 years ago. What is to explain, for example, the fact that at the same time as the commemorative event at Hlávka College, the President of the Republic is on Národní třída?
Today will go down in history as "the period of rewriting history", especially that related to the Second World War. This is happening not only through targeted re-interpretations of historical events, but also by pushing them out of the public space.
Over the past few years, we have been watching with great concern the tendency to interpret the events of modern history according to the interests of the current ruling regime, not only in ideological but also in practical terms. Places of memory (monuments, statues, street names...) are being liquidated, important days are being rewritten by others that are in the focus of the current regime, as is the case with 17 November.
New monuments and memorials are also being built, but to personalities and groups that are already highly controversial, thus gradually opening the way to an absolute confusion of the concepts of winners and losers. We communists radically disagree with this, which we continuously prove through our activities, especially our educational and defensive activities. That is why we, unlike the President, celebrated 17 November as International Student Day at Hlávka College.
In my last question I mentioned 1989, when the 40-year rule of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia ended. To this day, many people use this 40-year period as an argument for the current state of affairs - it is said to take some time to "fix" the 40-year rule. Let's play prognosticators or fortune tellers: what will be said in five years? Or is 40 years to 1989 and 40 years since 1989 completely different?
The word "fix" is quite humorous in this context. Our country was handed over to the new ruling class in 1989 in very good condition, without a staggering national debt, with a public health and education system and other social safeguards for ordinary workers. What has been left of this in 35 years?
School fees had to be fought against, doctor's fees have been increased, the retirement age has been raised, nurseries have been abolished, the national debt continues to grow, our government is engaged in several wars, housing is an unaffordable luxury and I could go on.
This will have to be corrected when the governments of transnational capital, which serve the interests of all but honest workers, are removed from power. The people gave these politicians their trust in the elections, but they have already betrayed it by signing up to a capitalist system that has exploitation of workers in its genes.
You think it'll get better someday? Will the merger within the STAČILO! movement, which the Communists will support in next year's parliamentary elections, help?
I am firmly convinced that it will get better. I am a historical optimist and I know that the truth is on our side. Indeed, uniting in the STOP! movement now seems the only rational way to open the door to the House of Commons, where processes for greater change can be set in motion.
However, these changes must not be symbolic, they must not be just a reversal of the current cruel regime, they must not patch up capitalism, as the Social Democrats are trying to do. They must be the basis for a completely new quality, for a new socio-economic order.
We communists don't want to go back to socialism, we want to go forward to socialism, and this could be one way. It is our duty to take that step, even if it means getting dirty.
iporta24.cz / photo: archive / gnews.cz - RoZ_07
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