TOP 09 seeks highest honour for 1968 invasion protester

The TOP 09 party has called for the country’s highest honour to be awarded to a former Soviet dissident. The party wants the Order of the White Lion to be awarded in memorium to Natalia Gorbanevska. Along with seven others the Russian staged a short lived protest in Moscow’s Red Square against the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. She was imprisoned afterwards and later detained in a psychiatric institution. She left for France in 1975 and died there last November.

Author: Chris Johnstone