About 370 people, including dozens of foreigners, were taken into custody during protests marking the 21st anniversary of the invasion of Czechoslovakia, a newspaper reported Tuesday.
Authorities blamed foreign media and "provocateurs" for Monday's demonstrations for more freedom and the withdrawal of Soviet troops who rolled in to crush Communist reform on Aug. 21, 1968.At least three protests were dispersed by baton-wielding police, and several people were beaten. However, the Communist Party daily Rude Pravo reported that there were no injuries.
The daily quoted an Interior Ministry official, Josef Dvorak, as saying 320 Czechoslovak citizens were detained as well as 50 foreigners. It did not say where they were from. Officials earlier declined to give any specific figures or to elaborate.
Czechoslovak activists said late Monday at least four Hungarians were among those arrested. A Polish journalist said he was told by Polish diplomats that "several" Poles were also detained.
The nation's entrenched leaders, installed by Moscow after 1968 but now under mounting pressure to introduce reform, blamed what the government news agency CTK called foreign "provocateurs" from Italy, Hungary and Poland for the protest and said they would be punished under valid Czechoslovak laws.
Rude Pravo reiterated those accusations and also accused Western news agencies and other media of inciting protest by reporting plans for mass demonstrations before they happened.
The busloads of riot police sent in to quell the protests were seen leaving the capital Tuesday.
The demonstrations marked the invasion led by the Soviets and joined by all Warsaw Pact nations except Romania, which ended the "Prague Spring" reforms begun by former Communist Party leader Alexander Dubcek.
In the protests, at least 4,000 people marched round the city for hours chanting calls for freedom and the withdrawal of Soviet troops and shouting to police "Let our brothers go!" each time arrests were made by hundreds of helmeted riot police.
The show of force contrasted with reforms under way in Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union, which have encouraged many Czechoslovaks to demand similar changes.
Hungarian government television on Monday broadcast interviews with former leaders who introduced the reforms of Prague Spring, interspersed with footage of burning tanks and of other emotional memories of the invasion.
In a previously unshown interview, former Deputy Premier Ota Sik, who fled to Switzerland after the invasion, said the present Czechoslovak leadership is "dancing on a thin rope. . . . it is really hoping that (Soviet President Mikhail S.) Gorbachev is going to fall and that it can survive that long."