I want freedom of speech for both myself and others
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François Brélaz was born on 16 October 1939 in Lausanne. From 1956 to 1999, he was an employee of the Swiss Post. In the mid-1960s he started making trips to Czechoslovakia. In 1982, he founded a local branch of the Jan Hus Association in Switzerland and served as its executive director for many years. In Czechoslovakia, he maintained close contact with dissidents, especially with Miloš Rejchrt. Between 1982 and 1989, he was a key supporter of Czechoslovak dissent in Switzerland. By November 1989, according to informed estimates, he managed to collect and donate over one million Czech crowns to the dissent. At the same time, he wrote articles about the situation in Czechoslovakia for Swiss newspapers under various pseudonyms. After his retirement in 2000, he began to make charity trips to Burkina Faso and to support the education of selected local children and adolescents; he was still carrying out these activities at the time of filming (2022). Between 2002 and 2015, he was a member of the cantonal parliament for the Democratic Union of the Centre.
