Jiří Dienstbier

Jiří Dienstbier (20 April 1937 – 8 January 2011) was a Czech politician and journalist.

Biography

Born in Kladno, he was one of Czechoslovakia's most respected foreign correspondents before being fired after the Prague Spring. Unable to have a livelihood as a journalist, he worked as a janitor for the next two decades. During this time, he secretly revived the suppressed Lidové noviny newspaper.

After the end of communist rule in 1989, he became the country's first non-Communist foreign minister in four decades, a post he held until 1992. Shortly after his appointment in December 1989, Dienstbier and Minister of National Defence Miroslav Vacek called for the withdrawal of 75,000 Soviet troops who had been stationed in the country since the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.

In 2008, he was elected to the Czech Senate for the Kladno region. He died on 8 January 2011 in Prague's Vinohrady Hospital.

Awards and honors

In 2000, the Vienna-based International Press Institute named him one of its 50 World Press Freedom Heroes of the past 50 years. In 2013, Dienstbier was posthumously awarded the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award given jointly by the Prague Society for International Cooperation and Global Panel Foundation.