21 August Aniversary of the 1968 Invasion

Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda said in a statement released on 20 August -- the eve of the 21 August anniversary of the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact countries -- that this is an appropriate time for reflecting on the values of democracy and human rights, TASR reported. Dzurinda said contemporary Slovakia is no longer an isolated country and is no longer part of a military alliance that "made decisions about us without us" and "sent tanks into our homeland." Dzurinda said, "Today we can understand the importance of deciding our destiny by ourselves." He is to lay a wreath outside Bratislava's Comenius University in memory of protesters who died there during the invasion. Former anticommunist dissident Jan Budaj, who is now chairman of the extraparliamentary Democratic Union, asked Prosecutor-General Milan Hanzel on 20 August to open an investigation into the circumstances leading to the Warsaw Pact invasion of August 1968, TASR reported. Budaj said in his request that during the invasion, "crimes were committed" by people who now are citizens of either the Czech Republic or Slovakia. He said the statute of limitations should not apply to crimes committed during the invasion, because it was a breach of international law and therefore can be considered a crime against humanity or a war crime.