Babiš accuses government of rewriting history with new body for preserving memory of totalitarian regimes

Ex-prime minister and ANO leader Andrej Babiš accused the government in parliament on Thursday evening of rewriting history with its planned Council for the Preservation of Historical Memory. In a speech as part of a lower house debate on television and radio licence fees, he turned to the topic of the Velvet Revolution, describing the events of November 17, 1989, as having started with the permission of the communist authorities and saying the participants had "arrived as members of the Socialist Youth Union and left as revolutionaries".

His statements provoked an angry response from MPs who had participated in the Velvet Revolution or whose parents were dissidents. At the time of the revolution, Mr Babiš was in Morocco as a prominent member of the then regime, according to Czech news site Deník N.

The formation of the Council for the Preservation of Historical Memory, approved by the cabinet this week, is intended to commemorate the victims of the totalitarian communist and Nazi regimes, pursue a systematic and conceptual approach to the preservation of their historical memory and support relevant educational, lecture and museum projects.