Jana Hradilková

"And the memory of the invasion in 1968 worked too. The wave of solidarity was very strong. On the one hand, there was People in Need with their SOS activities, and on the other hand there was this beautiful journalist in the thick of the war, bringing the fresh news. People spontaneously started asking, 'What can we do?' and started sending in money, donating even before we had an account set up. Things started to happen and I realised we had to make it official; we couldn't go on like that. We could do something; create a service for people who not only felt the need to read the news but also felt an urge to do something, anything. Give money, make a campaign, go on a march, figure something out - a service for those people, and then to connect them with the people who were suffering out there in the war zone. Which in turn was catered for by the people around Petra with whom we started to communicate. Again, it reminded me of those moments, those reactions... Just the news that people were marching here and that some people were backing Václav Havel and asking the shooting to stop... The moral support that it provided, which we knew of from Petra, was reason enough to continue. It reminded me of the situation when I was reading English newspapers way back, and all four of the newspapers that I was supposed to censor printed a piece on what had happened during a house search and what had happened to Zina Freundová, for example. Suddenly, what we only knew as a secret in the dissent circles, I was reading about in these mainstream English papers - someone covered it. That has a very powerful effect. This reminded me of the importance of what we're doing in Chechnya: this connection; us being able to tell them: 'You are not alone!'"

"There was this kind of synergy with our friendly neighbours, probably not just because of us, and we got very active. We were like, 'This is where we need to be, right here. A lot is going on in Prague but this is exactly where this is needed.' Of course, it brought... that's where the relationship of those people to us showed. As you asked before, it worked on the basis of 'You have such and such a status, they have such and such a status...' But there really was some tension here because you looked at theme differently and they looked at you differently... The rumours started: 'Hradilková wants to hang the communists from trees' and such, very harsh. 'Hradilková wants to tear down the monument to the fallen heroes...' Those people stopped saying hello to me."