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Surgery will no longer be a mandatory requirement for trans people to legally change their sex in Czechia, the Constitutional Court ruled on Tuesday. The court stated in its verdict that the requirement for surgical intervention and sterilisation is a violation of human dignity and the basic right of people to protect their bodily integrity and personal autonomy. These two legal requirements will be annulled with effect from mid-2025.

The names of Holocaust victims were publicly read out on Monday afternoon in 31 Czech towns and cities for Yom HaShoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day. The public reading of Holocaust victims' names has taken place annually in Czechia since 2006, initially only in Prague, but with more and more towns and cities participating each year. According to the organisers, the idea is to spread awareness of the Holocaust and show the extreme consequences of racist government policies.

Prague primary school teacher Martina Bednářová, who faced charges of denying genocide and war crimes over statements she made in class about the war in Ukraine, has had her acquittal upheld by the Court of Appeal. The court rejected the public prosecutor's appeal, which requested an eight-month suspended sentence for the former Czech teacher, as well as a five-year ban on pedagogic, educational or other work with children. The judge said that although the teacher's statements may have been wrong from an ethical and pedagological perspective, from a legal perspective, it could not be proven that the teacher had denied any specific war crimes and thus could not be punished by means of criminal law.

Ms. Bednářová was fired from her job at a Prague primary school after she made the controversial statements in a lesson in early April 2022, a few weeks after Russia launched its war on Ukraine, and was subsequently charged with denying war crimes and genocide.

A Czech parish priest who tried to enter the Vatican on Sunday carrying an air pistol, two knives and a screwdriver in his bag was detained by the police, Italian media reports. He was accompanying a group of pilgrims from Czechia but was apprehended during the security checks visitors are required to go through in order to enter the Vatican. The bag in which the police found the suspicious items allegedly belonged to someone else from the party, who is also being prosecuted for illegally arming the clergyman.

During interrogation, the priest claimed that the weapons were only intended for self-defence, a story which, according to Italian daily Corriere della Sera, investigators do not find credible. The current theory is that the man may have entrusted the bag to the priest thinking that he would not be subjected to a thorough security check due to his ecclesiastical status.