Slovakia
25 March 1988
Candle demonstration
The police brutally intervened against a peaceful demonstration for the observance of human and civil rights (the ‘candle demonstration’) in Bratislava. This was the first mass public protest since 1969. The harsh intervention aimed to show that the situation was firmly in control and sought to paralyze the hidden church’s activities. But the demonstration considerably contributed to the communist regime increasingly losing public sympathy and falling into isolation.