Akce Asanace (English: Sanitation Act) was the cover name for a Czechoslovak StB (secret police) operation in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with which the Communist regime tried to force inconvenient people, especially signatories of Charter 77, to leave the country.
[4] Pressure peaked between 1980 and 1981, as the government was afraid the Charter 77 movement would join forces with Poland's nascent Solidarity.
[4] In all, 280 signatories of Charter 77, i.e., about 15% of the total number, were forced to emigrate, including ten members of the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted (VONS).
[5][4] The operation also swept up dissidents that had not signed the charter, such as Radko Pavlovec, a noted anti-fascist activist who had been imprisoned between 1952 and 1960 at the Jáchymov labor camp.
[7][8][9] In September 2021, courts recognized four additional StB employees who had persecuted Charter 77 signatories such as Vratislav Brabenec of The Plastic People of the Universe and Jaroslav Jeroným Neduha of Extempore, though their verdicts have not been finalized yet.