František Mikloško

František Mikloško ( born June 2, 1947 in Nitra ) is a Slovak politician. Before the Velvet Revolution it was an important Slovak dissident. He was a long time member of parliament for the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH ). Mikloško is married.

Life and work

In his youth he was strongly influenced by the persecution of the Catholic Church in Slovakia. After graduation, he studied mathematics and physics in Bratislava. Awarded the degree of Doctor of Science, he completed his studies. Impressed by the experiences of Jukl and New Year Kröméry and Cardinal Ján Chryzostom Korec to Mikloško joined the Church in the underground.

František Mikloško was born in Nitra. He was the youngest of four children. His father was a lawyer, his mother a high school teacher of French and Slovak. František Mikloško lived through high school in Nitra. In his youth the experience of persecution of the Catholic Church influenced him greatly. The communist secret police raided his home and his parents were picked up for questioning. Particularly hard hit was his mother, who worked in the 50s for Kleinsamizdaten as a translator. For František Mikloško it was hard to take that constantly Catholic priests and members of Catholic orders, to which his family was in close contact, were persecuted.

In 1966, František Mikloško went to Bratislava to study at Comenius University in Bratislava mathematics and physics. He completed his studies with a doctorate in natural sciences. In Bratislava he met three people who have strongly influenced his life. From 1972, he organized the church underground groups in secret.

There were Vladimír Jukl and New Year Krŏméry who were dismissed in 1964 after 14 years in prison because of religious activities from prison, and the current Nitraner Cardinal Korec that after eight years in prison in 1968 - which had been imposed because of his secret episcopal ordination - was released. Impressed by the biographies of these three personalities, and in dialogue with them, he joined the underground church. In the 80 years he led these groups at the Comenius University. Together with Ján Čarnogurský and Martin Lauko He published underground writings. In addition to this, he also kept in touch with middle-class underground circles and organized exhibitions of artists who were subject to a state fair ban. He secretly informed along with Čarnogurský the western radio station Voice of America and Radio Free Europe about the conditions in his country. From 1972 to 1983 he conducted research at the Slovak Academy of Sciences in the field of numerical mathematics. Then he worked as a secondary school teacher and gave thus a larger space for his work in the underground church. After the discovery of those activities by the secret police, he was released and made ​​his way with crafts.

On 25 March 1988 organized Čarnogurský and Mikloško the "Candle Demonstration " in Bratislava, which established the following requirements:

• Free decision of the Church in the choice of bishops
• Freedom of religion and
• Human Rights

The demonstration was brutally suppressed by the police.

As of November 1989, he was a member of the civil rights movement " Public Against Violence ," which initiated the " Velvet Revolution ", and worked in the Bureau.

In March 1990, he co-opted the Slovak National Council ( the Slovak parliament ). In the first free elections in the same year he was elected to the Slovak Parliament and was from June 1990 to June 1992 he was the first chairman of the Slovak National Council.

In 1992, he joined the Christian Democratic party of his friend Ján Čarnogurský KDH and was for this long time deputy in the Slovak parliament. Recently even as the senior deputy. In addition to his position as deputy chairman of the party he was ten, group president. In 2004 he was one of the Slovakian presidential candidates.

František Mikloško is member of the International Award Committee of Adalbert Foundation and winner of Adalbert Prize 2005. His very personal speech delivered on the occasion of the award ceremony, in which he apologized as Slovaks in Hungary for the events after 1945, has in Slovakia and in Hungary great look excited.