ABSTRACT
Charter 77 regarded and proclaimed itself as an independent citizens' campaign. At the outset, it deliberately refuted the allegation that it sought to be a political party. It was blindingly clear that it had none of the means to become one. There is nothing illegal or anti-state in the idea of a voluntary movement of citizens to defend human rights and civil liberties. On the contrary, the creation of the Charter, just like its declared aims, was fully in accord with the letter of the State Constitution and the freedoms which, on paper, our state guaranteed our citizens when it endorsed the Human Rights Conventions and the Helsinki Agreement, and committed itself internationally to ensuring their implementation in respect of its own citizens. If you read the first text of the Charter, i.e., its proclamation, you will find that, apart from its detailing of proven instances of actual wrongs done to citizens in contravention of the undertakings and guarantees of existing legislation, it is composed in its entirety of quotations of passages from the State Constitution and references to the principles embodied both therein and in the international agreements endorsed by the state. Therefore, it was a political mistake of the first order for the powers that be to have rejected from the outset the dialogue proposed by the Charter. Their mistake was even graver because that dialogue was chiefly in their own interest. After all, not only would it have been possible, but it would have been a wise and circumspect move to have accepted the Charter as an expression of discontent at the violation of the state's own laws, and to have entered into a debate with it regarding the ways and means of guaranteeing these laws.
