Srp denies working with StB

Senate candidate and Jazz Section leader accused of informing on friends

Srp denies working with StB

ČSSD candidate for Senate Karel Srp, former leader of the dissident music association Jazz Section, got some bad publicity yesterday. He denied it all.
Lidové Noviny's top story yesterday read "ČSSD's Candidate to Senate was StB Informant who Denounced Dissidents". Karel Srp, leader of the "Jazz Section" group of musicians and friends of music, was thereby indicted as a collaborator with Czechoslovakia's StB, the Secret Police. LN showed Interior Ministry documents which it claimed were proof of Srp's double agent status.
But Právo ran a story the same day which asserted Srp's innocence: He was the object of an StB attempt to discredit him. Pravo also cited documents, but these showed Srp was the victim of a plot.
At a press conference yesterday, Srp called LN's allegations preposterous, and he said he was planning to take the newspaper to court to prove it.
He won a court battle a few years ago which absolved him of any guilt in the matter. Srp also served two years in a Czechoslovak prison for crimes against the Communist regime.
The LN story claims that Srp had 151 meetings with the StB. From those, 299 agency reports were written. He was alleged to have informed on Jaroslav Hutka, a musician at the time. His alleged code name Hudebník means "musician" in Czech. LN ran an interview with Srp in which he refused to answer its questions, while questioning the newspaper's tactics.
Srp says Interior Ministry documents were a frame job which attempted to discredit him in the eyes of Jazz Section and American authorities, which would then refuse to allow him into the USA.
Srp's Jazz Section was one of the major ways musicians of the 70s showed their disdain for the Communist regime. The organization organized concerts, made records and published books, many of which were forbidden either at publication or just afterwards. Members were not only musicians but also dissidents who wanted to have the freedom to listen to the music they chose.
Social Democrat politicians, including Prime Minister Miloš Zeman, stood by their Senate candidate throughout the ordeal yesterday. Zeman told ČTK that "I have to go from the information that Srp was in a Communist prison at the end of the 80s, and that real StB agents were not in those prisons. As a dissident and head of the Jazz Section he played an important role in Czech resistance. It's not even worth answering the allegations in LN."
Srp is being sponsored by the ČSSD but is not a party member. He is a darkhorse to win the Senate election.
George Griffis