agost
de 2009
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John
Lennon and the Communist regime.
Lennon
was a hero to the pacifist youth of Central and Eastern Europe
during
the
totalitarian era. Prior to 1989 when communism ruled,
western pop songs
were
banned by Communist authorities, and especially
John Lennon´s songs,
because
it was praising freedom that didn't exist here.
Some musicians were
actually
jailed for playing it!
When
John Lennon was murdered in 1980 he became a sort of hero to some
of
the
young and his picture was painted on this wall, for whatever
reason right
here,
along with graffiti defying the authorities. Don't forget that
back then the
Czech
people had few opportunities to express their feelings
with their lack of
freedom.
By doing this, those young activists risked prison for what authorities
called
"subversive activities against the state".
But
the threat of prison couldn't keep people
from slipping there at night to
scrawl
graffiti first in the form of Beatles lyrics and odes to Lennon,
then they
came
to paint their own feelings and dreams on the wall.
The
Communist police tried repeatedly to whitewash
over the portrait and
messages
of peace but they could never manage to keep the wall clean.
On the
second
day it was again full of poems and flowers with paintings of Lennon.
Even
the installation of surveillance cameras and the posting
of an overnight
guard
couldn't stop the opinions from being expressed.
John
Lennon Peace Wall
The
Lennon Wall represented not only a memorial to John Lennon and his ideas
for
peace, but also a monument to free speech and the non-violent
rebellion of
Czech
youth against the regime. It was a small war of Czech people
against the
communist
police who cleaned the wall.