Berlin  - An association of Germans who have roots in the Sudetenland area of the western Czech Republic made an award Saturday to Prague journalist and human rights activist Petr Uhl for supporting their cause.

Uhl, 66, had received the award for detailing the expulsion of German speakers from the country after World War II, Bernd Posselt, spokesman for the association of Sudeten Germans, said.

Uhl, who was persecuted by the former communist authorities in the then Czechoslovakia following the suppression of the 1968 "Prague Spring," had always stressed that human rights were indivisible, Posselt said.

"He stands for the truthful evaluation of the expulsion of Germans from the Czech Republic, in a way that I have seldom seen from either Czech or German figures," Posselt said.

Uhl said in an interview with the association's newspaper that the Germans expelled in 1945-46 and their descendants were deserving of support.

"We are speaking about a great tragedy here... It was a tragedy for Czechoslovakia and thus for Europe," he told the newspaper.

The Sudeten Germans, who had lived in the area since the Middle Ages, played a key role in the run-up to, and aftermath of, World War II.

Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler forced Czechoslovakia to cede the region to Germany in 1938, saying German speakers were being persecuted there.

Hitler seized the rest of the country in early 1939, ahead of his invasion of Poland in September, which precipitated World War II.

After the war, the seized territory was restored to Czechoslovakia, and more than 2 million German speakers were deported to West and East Germany. Many died from acts of violence and from starvation.

The postwar expulsions under the so-called Benes Decrees, which have never been repealed, remain a sore point for many Germans.

Uhl was arrested after Soviet tanks rolled into Prague to crush the opening up under progressive communist leader Alexander Dubcek, spending several years in prison.

He was one of the initial signatories to the Charta 77 of 1977, along with Vaclav Havel, who was to become Czech president after the 1989 collapse of communism, serving a further term in prison for his activities against the communist rulers.

Uhl was the Czech government's human rights commissioner 1998- 2001. (dpa)