[NedKelly]

In Czechoslovakia on 16 January 1969, a student, Jan Palach, set himself on fire in Wenceslas Square and died shortly afterwards. He had told friends that he was not protesting the invasion of his country by Soviet forces as much as the dem…oralisation of his fellow citizens in their acceptance of the invasion and its consequences. Twenty years later, commemorations of his death led to the Velvet Revolution.
“It was not so much in opposition to the Soviet occupation, but the demoralization which was setting in, that people were not only giving up, but giving in. And he wanted to stop that demoralization. I think the people in the street, the multitude of people in the street, silent, with sad eyes, serious faces, which when you looked at those people you understood that everyone understands, all the decent people who were on the verge of making compromises.”
The suicide in Syntagma Square yesterday , outside the Greek Parliament building, brings this more to mind. He left a statement – “I have no other way to react apart from finding a dignified end before I start sifting through garbage for food.”
I think the theme of an assertion of human dignity in the face of massive affronts is in both sacrifices.

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