Caputova: Our Duty to Act So That Drama of August 1968 Isn't Repeated

Caputova: Our Duty to Act So That Drama of August 1968 Isn't Repeated

Bratislava, August 19 (TASR) – Slovakia today decides its own future freely and independently, and it’s both an opportunity and duty to act so that the drama of August 1968 is not repeated, said President Zuzana Caputova during Friday’s commemoration of the 54th anniversary of the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops on Safarik Square in Bratislava.

“We’re facing massive propaganda, the spreading of lies and hatred. We’re exposed to efforts to divide us into adversarial camps. But we have our destiny in our own hands. We have an opportunity and duty to act so that we don’t experience the drama of August 1968 again. It’s this legacy that we should remember at this time,” stated Caputova.

“We don’t live in a bipolar world like in 1968, when the states on the other side of the Iron Curtain couldn’t help us in any way. We’ve become part of a democratic international community that is helping the invaded Ukraine,” remarked Caputova. Who can understand a sorely tested country if not those who were normalised under the barrels of guns and tanks, she added.

The president considers it important to commemorate the events related to the occupation by Warsaw Pact troops and all the victims. “The stories of the people who were affected by August 1968 and the subsequent normalisation events are still alive today,” she noted. In the context of the war in Ukraine, she said, the memory of the events of 1968 can serve as a reminder of a current threat.