News

Former Czech president Václav Havel took part in a protest outside the Chinese embassy in Prague on Wednesday against the imprisonment of a Chinese dissident. Along with the cleric Bishop Václav Malý and actor Pavel Landovský, Mr Havel attempted to hand an open letter to embassy officials calling for the release of Liu Xiaobo, who was recently sentenced to 11 years in jail after criticising the Chinese government. When officials did not answer a bell at the embassy gate, the three posted the letter in its mailbox. Václav Havel, who was himself a dissident, told reporters that January 6 was a significant date, as it was on Three Kings’ Day 33 years ago that the Charter 77 protest document was issued in communist Czechoslovakia.

Meanwhile, the Czech prime minister, Jan Fischer, has asked the minister of foreign affairs, Pavel Kohout, to look into the imprisonment of Mr Liu. A spokesperson for the government said that would involve interviewing the Chinese ambassador to Prague about the subject.

Inspectors say that there are very few native speakers teaching languages in Czech schools at the present time. An annual schools inspectors’ report quoted by the Czech News Agency found that compared to the 1990s the number of native speakers teaching in Czech schools today is extremely low. Language lessons are frequently given by unqualified teachers, the report says. On the positive side, language lessons are being provided at increasing numbers of nursery schools, with more than half now offering at least one foreign language.

The Czech president, Václav Klaus, had a New Year’s lunch with the leader of the Civic Democrats, Mirek Topolánek, on Wednesday. Speaking afterwards, Mr Topolánek said that both men had agreed on the necessity of combating the Czech Republic’s swelling public finance deficit. After also holding talks with the prime minister and the chairs of the two houses of the Czech Parliament, President Klaus will on Monday have lunch with the leader of the country’s biggest left-wing, the Social Democrats Jiri Paroubek.

Meanwhile, trains on the C or red line of the Prague metro system were halted for over an hour and a half on Wednesday morning after a dog entered a tunnel between the Ládví and Letňany stations. There have been similar cases of dogs in metro tunnels in the past, though in some cases drivers were ordered to drive slowly rather than stop completely.