News

A Czech official has called for the removal of a memorial to fallen Soviet soldiers that was unveiled at Prague’s Olšany Cemetery last month, the news website echo24.cz reported on Tuesday. Igor Zolotarev, who is deputy chair of the government’s council for national minorities, said the sign, which is in Cyrillic script, was a mockery and a desecration of the nearby graves of those who had fled the Bolsheviks. The memorial pays tribute to fallen “internationalists”, which Mr. Zolotarev said was a term that also included Russian soldiers who had provided “international brotherly assistance” to Czechoslovakia by invading the country in 1968. The Russian Centre of Science and Culture in Prague, which is behind the sign, says it was supported by the Czech Defence Ministry, the Senate and Prague Town Hall, but all three have distanced themselves from this claim.

The Czech prime minister, Bohuslav Sobotka, has promised that his cabinet will deal with the issue of discrimination against the Roma minority in the Czech Republic, the news site novinky.cz reported. Mr. Sobotka made the pledge in a reply to a letter the government received from the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Nils Muižnieks, who called for action to halt a growing number of anti-Roma demonstrations. The Czech leader said his cabinet would stand up to all forms of violence, hostility and discrimination, including “anti-gypsyism”. Mr. Sobotka said the government was preparing a national strategy on Roma integration that would be in place until 2020.

A third of Czechs believe that the change of political system in 1989 did not “pay off”, suggests the results of a survey conducted by the CVVM agency quoted by the news website iDnes.cz. Sixty-three percent of respondents agreed with the statement that the replacement of the Communist government had “paid off”. Thirty-four percent of those surveyed said the changes had brought about more benefits than losses; a quarter of respondents expressed the opposite view. Over 1,000 people were questioned for the opinion poll last month.

Several dozen ethnic Czech families from the Volyn province in Ukraine have asked the Czech Interior and Foreign ministries for help in repatriation to the Czech Republic. The so-called Volyn Czechs expressed concern over tension between Ukraine and Russia which has escalated in recent weeks, leading up to the possible annexation of Crimea. The Interior Ministry confirmed it had received a request for aid. Ethnic Czechs settled in the Volyn area in the second half of the 19th century; some returned to Czechoslovakia after WW II, most often to areas of the Sudetenland formerly inhabited by ethnic Germans who were expelled after the war. Others returned after the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia after 1989.