Anger mounts as police end protest against US base

The battle lines for the United States' controversial anti-missile missile shield in central-eastern Europe have been drawn across the Czech Republic, with the pro-base Prague government fast losing the fight for Czech hearts and minds. Military police have forcibly ended a six-week-old "occupation" by Czech Greenpeace activists of Height 718, the planned site of the US missile-tracking high-speed radar base in the Brdy military district southwest of Prague. Following the center-right Prague government's signing of the US-Czech missile base agreement last month, a wave of mass protests and "rolling" hunger strikes demonstrated the level of public disquiet over the siting of the US base on Czech soil. The ranks of environmental protesters and leftist anti-missile activists have recently been boosted by prominent public figures on symbolic, short hunger strikes at Brdy to show their opposition to the US base. Bruce Gagnon, an anti-nuclear activist of the US-based Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, spent two weeks on sympathy hunger strike with the Czechs in his Maine home. He explained to Radio Prague that, having recently been invited to Prague by the No to Bases Coalition, it was "very clear" to him that there was "overwhelming opposition to the US radar in the Czech Republic." The protesters are demanding the government of Mirek Topolanek halts the parliamentary ratification of the base accord, scheduled for the autumn. According to the latest opinion poll by Prague's CVVM agency, 66% of Czechs now oppose the siting of the US base in their county, with those backing it down to 24%. Jiri Tutter, leader of the Czech chapter of Greenpeace, explained the reasons for the Greenpeace protests and the six-week-long occupation of Height 718 at Brdy: "We do not believe that the US radar and the Czech national missile defense are the best tools to secure international peace." President Vaclav Klaus rejected a call from Jan Toma and Jan Bedna, two prominent activists, who recently ended a three-week hunger strike, to discuss the US base issue. Calling the hunger strike "blackmail," president Klaus said that such practices had no place in a modern democracy. The hunger strikes are to be joined by prominent Czech public figures, including former anti-communist dissident Petr Uhl and actress Anna Geislerová. They have announced they would hold one-day hunger strikes at the Brdy base.