Naděžda Kavalírová (13 November 1923 – 20 January 2017) was a Czech

paramedic A paramedic is a healthcare professional trained in the medical model, whose main role has historically been to respond to emergency calls for medical help outside of a hospital. Paramedics work as part of the emergency medical services (EMS), ...

, human rights activist and

political prisoner A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although ...

. She became actively involved in the resistance to Czechoslovakia's

Communist government A communist state, also known as a Marxist–Leninist state, is a one-party state in which the totality of the power belongs to a party adhering to some form of Marxism–Leninism, a branch of the communist ideology. Marxism–Leninism was ...

. She later headed the Confederation of Political Prisoners (''Konfederace politických vězňů České republiky'') from 2003 until her death in January 2017.

Life

Kavalírová was born Naděžda Morávková in

Opočno Opočno (; ) is a town in Rychnov nad Kněžnou District in the Hradec Králové Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 3,100 inhabitants. Opočno is known for the Opočno Castle, one of the most magnificent examples of Czech Renaissance archi ...

, Czechoslovakia, in 1923. In 1948, following the

takeover In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company (the ''target'') by another (the ''acquirer'' or ''bidder''). In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are publicly listed, in contrast to the acquisi ...

of Czechoslovakia by the

Communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

government, Kavalírová was expelled from the faculty of the School of Medicine at the

Charles University in Prague Charles University (CUNI; , UK; ; ), or historically as the University of Prague (), is the largest university in the Czech Republic. It is one of the oldest universities in the world in continuous operation, the oldest university north of the ...

due to her membership in the

Czech National Social Party The Czech National Social Party (Czech language, Czech: ''Česká strana národně sociální'', ČSNS) is a political party in the Czech Republic, that played an important role in Czechoslovakia during the interwar period and then between 1945 an ...

. She soon became actively involved in the country's opposition movement against the Communist government. In 1956, Kavalírová was convicted of

treason Treason is the crime of attacking a state (polity), state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to Coup d'état, overthrow its government, spy ...

and espionage against the Communist government. She was sentenced to three years as a political prisoner from 1956 to 1959. She was a member of Czechoslovak National Socialist Party and participated in a student march to Prague Castle.Nadezhda Kavalirova died. She was chairwoman of the Confederation of Political Prisoners
/ref> Kavalírová headed the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes from 2007 to 2013. She also served as the leader of the Confederation of Political Prisoners from 2003 until her death in January 2017. Naděžda Kavalírová died in Pardubice, Czech Republic, on 20 January 2017, at the age of 93.

References

1923 births 2017 deaths Czech human rights activists Women human rights activists Czechoslovak physicians Czech women physicians Czechoslovak dissidents Czechoslovak prisoners and detainees Czech anti-communists Czechoslovak activists Academic staff of Charles University Political repression in Czechoslovakia Recipients of the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk People from Opočno {{CzechRepublic-bio-stub