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People around the country marked the 26th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution amid heightened security on Tuesday. Overshadowed by the terrorist attacks in Paris and the migrant crisis in Europe the anniversary of the country’s return to democracy and European values took on new meaning in light of present day attitudes to migrants.

President Miloš Zeman will mark the 26th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution and the 76th anniversary of a Nazi crackdown on Czech universities at Albertov shortly after a demonstration against immigrants is due to start there, the president’s spokesman Jiří Ovčáček told Czech Television on Sunday. Mr. Ovčáček said it was likely that the head of state would address the gathering, similarly as he did last year when faced with a hostile crowd of his critics. Mr. Zeman is known for his tough stance on the migrant issue and has in the past come under fire for making anti-Islamic statements. The migrant issue is expected to dominate the 26th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution with demonstrations both in support of and against migrants planned in Prague and other cities.

The British philosopher Roger Scruton began giving underground seminars at the homes of Czechoslovak dissidents in the late 1970s. He was eventually thrown out of the communist state but the clandestine network he contributed to remained in place until the Velvet Revolution, when several of its “graduates” helped shape the new democracy.

One of the early atrocities of World War Two was the violent suppression of protests by Czech university students on 28 October 1939. This was just over six months after German troops had marched into Prague. One student was killed and three weeks later a further nine were executed. Twelve hundred more were sent to concentration camps. The news caused outrage in countries fighting Nazi Germany and 17 November was declared International Students’ Day. With the help of staff from the Czech Radio archive, David Vaughan and students from the Anglo-American

Few people were as close to Václav Havel as his secretary of 14 years, Vladimír Hanzel. Originally a music critic and computer programmer, Hanzel was by Havel’s side in his dissident days before serving under him at Prague Castle during four terms as president. He was also the first person in December 2011 to make public the news of the death of the man who led Czechoslovakia to democracy. When we spoke, I began by asking Vladimír Hanzel about his fateful first encounter with Václav Havel.

President Miloš Zeman says he is aware of a conspiracy theory that a protest against him on November 17 was organised by Prague’s U.S. Embassy. In an interview in Saturday’s Právo he said it was “a hypothesis that could not be ruled out”, but added that there was at present no evidence to support it. Thousands of people held up red cards against Mr. Zeman at a demonstration on Prague’s Národní St. on the 25th anniversary of the start of the Velvet Revolution. He made light of the protest in Právo, suggesting the demonstrators were holding Opencards in protest at the waste of a billion crowns on the electronic card system used for public transport and other services. Elsewhere in the interview he said Pussy Riot would have been burned to death in the Middle Ages. His use of a crude Czech word to translate the Russian group’s name and other swearing in a live radio interview was widely condemned.

25 years ago today, the dissident playwright Václav Havel became the first non-communist president of Czechoslovakia since 1948. Back then, Edvard Beneš had resigned from office in the midst of a communist putsch led by Klement Gottwald. 41 years later, the communists would vote to destroy their own monopoly on power.

The name Jolyon Naegele is familiar to many who lived through the final years of communism in Czechoslovakia and other countries in the then Soviet Bloc. At that time Naegele was a roving Eastern European correspondent for the U.S. radio station Voice of America. In a special interview, he discusses his first impressions of Czechoslovakia in 1978, his experiences with the StB, meeting Václav Havel, the Velvet Revolution, and developments since then.

Otakar Van Gemund was questioned by the police – and subsequently detained for two hours – while on his way to demonstrate against President Miloš Zeman in Prague on November 17. The anti-Vladimir Putin protester, who previously disrupted a news conference conducted by the Czech PM, says it was the second time that day the police had stopped him and checked his ID without offering a reason.

The late Czech president, dissident and playwright Václav Havel was honoured by members of the US Congress on Wednesday. A bust of Mr Havel was unveiled at a ceremony in the U.S. Capitol in the presence of Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka and Havel’s widow, Dagmar. The ceremony concluded a series of events marking the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, which toppled the Communist regime.