This August 11, Jan Palach would have been 70 years old. A student at Charles University in January 1969, 20-year-old Palach doused himself in gasoline and set himself alight at the top of Prague’s Wenceslas Square. He took the drastic decision to lay down his life as a form of protest – five months after Soviet tanks had rolled into Czechoslovakia.

Even in the midst of the continuing pandemic Charles University has honoured Jan Palach, the student who in an act of protest in January 1969 doused himself in petrol and set himself alight. The drastic act, sacrificing his life, was aimed at shaking his fellow citizens out of lethargy to protest the Soviet-led invasion.