News

President Václav Klaus has refused to pardon an 86-year-old former prosecutor who helped send democratic politician Milada Horáková to the gallows in 1950. Ludmila Brožová-Polednová, the last living participant in one of the most notorious show trials of communist Czechoslovakia, was found guilty as an accomplice to murder and sent to six years in prison on September 9 of this year. The request to pardon the former prosecutor in view of her advanced age was submitted by Supreme State Attorney Renata Vesecká. President Klaus said on Tuesday that although it was controversial to send a person of that age to prison for six years a pardon from him would negate an important decision of the Czech judiciary relating to a tragic period of Czech history.

On Tuesday the opposition Social Democrats called on Interior Minister Ivan Langer to resign over the affair. Like Vlastimil Tlustý, the interior minister has denied that he knowingly cooperated with the mafia. He said the phone conversations were perfectly innocent and had taken place long before the controversial businessman František Mrázek was perceived as the unofficial head of the Czech mafia. The opposition is calling for a special parliamentary commission to investigate the affair.

The Czech Republic has presented a report on the state of human rights in North Korea to the UN General Assembly, calling for action to curb extensive human rights abuse. The document, drafted by the global legal services organization DLA Piper and several human rights groups, documents extensive abuse in the country. Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg told the General Assembly in New York that it was time to progress from words to actions, urging the UN to use all the peaceful means at its disposal to put pressure on Pyongyang. He said a 2006 report on human rights violations in North Korea had attracted attention to the problem but no action had been taken.

Police officers and intelligence service employees are planning to demonstrate outside the Office of the Government on October 1 in support of higher wages. The decision to stage a protest was made by the police trade union organization in reaction to the government’s draft budget for 2009, which was approved by the cabinet on Monday. The proposed budget dashes expectations of higher wages for all officers and one of the chief demands is that officers in the regions whose wages were not raised this year should get an adequate pay rise in 2009. Police trade unions are demanding that the government should prepare a new wage system next year that would correct the discrepancy in wages.