The World - News from Sept. 25, 1988

Police in Czechoslovakia broke up a rally in central Prague by several hundred people calling for political reforms. Witnesses said police dragged participants into a waiting bus and manhandled Western journalists. The official news agency Ceteka reported that 47 people were detained. A correspondent for the Associated Press was threatened with expulsion and plainclothes police confiscated the notes of a Reuters reporter after roughing him up. The crackdown apparently was intended to prevent a repetition of last month’s march in the capital by 10,000 people chanting demands for political freedom and the withdrawal of Soviet troops.