Career
Battěk co-founded the Club of Committed Non-Party Members (KAN) in 1968, which promoted human rights. KAN was banned by the Soviet Union following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia later in 1968. Battěk was arrested and imprisoned on two occasions for activities against the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia.
He spent ten years imprisoned by Communist authorities during the 1970s and 1980s.
Battěk was a signatory of Charter 77, which criticized the Communist regime for rejecting human rights. He also joined the Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Prosecuted.
In 1993, the leadership of the ČSSD reversed its original decision to expel Battěk and invited him to rejoin the ČSSD. In 1996, Battěk ran as a candidate for the Senate of the Parliament of the Czechoslovakian Republic as an independent from ward 8 in Prague, but lost the election. In 1997, he was awarded the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk by President of the Czechoslovakian Republic Václav Havel.
Rudolf Battěk died on March 17, 2013, at the age of 88.