Petr Cibulka (born 27 October 1950) is a

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places * Czech, ...

politician and

dissident A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 20th ...

. He is the founder and leader of the minor Right Bloc political party.

Communist era

Cibulka was born in Brno,

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

. As a former member of

Charter 77 Charter 77 (''Charta 77'' in Czech and Slovak) was an informal civic initiative in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic from 1976 to 1992, named after the document Charter 77 from January 1977. Founding members and architects were Jiří Něm ...

, Cibulka was imprisoned multiple times during Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. Prior to the

Velvet Revolution The Velvet Revolution ( cs, Sametová revoluce) or Gentle Revolution ( sk, Nežná revolúcia) was a non-violent transition of power in what was then Czechoslovakia, occurring from 17 November to 28 November 1989. Popular demonstrations agains ...

in 1989, Cibulka had been arrested three times, and spent a total of four years in prison for distributing non-official cultural and musical material. During the Velvet Revolution, he was again arrested and imprisoned, but was released as crowds gathered in front of the prison in which he was held and demanded his release.

StB archives disclosure

In the early 1990s, Cibulka published material from still-classified

StB State Security ( cs, Státní bezpečnost, sk, Štátna bezpečnosť) or StB / ŠtB, was the secret police force in communist Czechoslovakia from 1945 to its dissolution in 1990. Serving as an intelligence and counter-intelligence agency, it d ...

archives, containing lists of tens of thousands names of people with connections to the secret services. In 1999, he published a second edition of the list in book form. The book sold five times as many copies as the average work of fiction. A searchable electronic version was added later. In 2003, the Czech government published similar, but much shorter lists, along with the very few personal files kept by the StB.

Other activities

Cibulka published an online political journal entitled "Uncensored News" ( cs, Necenzurované Noviny). He is also the founder and leader of a tiny political party, the Right Bloc ( cs, Pravý blok). He was nominated by the party as its candidate in the 2013 presidential election, but he was able to collect only 300 signatures of the required 50,000, and did not qualify as a candidate.

References

External links

Party website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cibulka, Petr 1950 births Living people Czech politicians Charter 77 signatories Czechoslovak prisoners and detainees Prisoners and detainees of Czechoslovakia People of the Velvet Revolution Candidates in the 2013 Czech presidential election