Stanislav Stojaspal

* 1958

Full recordings are available only for logged users.

We want free elections, we do not want a police state

Stanislav Stojaspal in his youth
Stanislav Stojaspal in his youth
photo: archiv pamětníka

Stanislav Stojaspal was born on July 10, 1958 in Moravská Třebová. Until he was five years old, his family lived in Třebařov village. Later they moved to the local part of Zábřeh - Skalička in 1963. In his youth he joined the so-called “Máničky”(“ a term used usually for young males with long hair in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and 1970s. Long hair for males was considered an expression of political and social attitudes in the communist regime) and from 1974 to 1981 he played the electric guitar in the music band Venus, which at private events played mainly the songs of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. He also went with his friends to festivals where bands, which were banned by the communist regime, performed. He had experienced the dragnets of public security forces at those festivals several times. During his two years military service from 1977 to 1979 in Prešov, he was summoned several times to be interviewed by a prosecutor for serious offenses. While playing the songs of Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin on a radio station at the military airport in Prešov, he was even transported by a helicopter to Ukraine to be for questioned there. He was also involved in anti-regime activities. Because of the samizdat, a search warrant took place in his flat several times, he was attending demonstrations and promoting the petition Several sentences. On November 20, 1989, three days after a brutal intervention against demonstrators in Národní třída, he placed a large banner on the gable of his house in Zvole, right by the main route Šumperk - Olomouc, with a sign calling for free elections. Despite the pressure from the chairman of the local national committee and police forces, he refused to remove it, so he ended up in an examination room in nearby Zabreh. The following hours he listened to threats of imprisonment for several years. It was thanks to the demonstration of approximately 20 activists under the office windows what finally forced the members of the Public Security to release Stanislav Stojaspal. Then he participated in revolutionary happenings. He was printing and distributing information leaflets and he was sounding meetings. Also, he became one of the founding members of the Zábřeh Civic Forum. In 2019 Stanislav Stojaspal still lived in the village of Zvole.