Čáslavská, Forman receive top state honour in Prague Castle ceremony

President Petr Pavel bestowed the Order of the White Lion, the highest Czech state honour, on four individuals at a ceremony at Prague Castle on Wednesday night. Gymnast Věra Čáslavská and film director Miloš Forman received the honour posthumously, while it also went to actress Iva Janžurová and Helena Illnerová, a former president of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

President Pavel handed out a total of 51 honours in the ceremony, which represented the culmination of this year's Czechoslovak Independence Day.

He awarded the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the second-highest state honour, posthumously to a former speaker of the Senate, Jaroslav Kubera; the Czechoslovak diplomat Vladimír Vochoč; the dissident and first post-1989 foreign minister Jiří Dienstbier; and the historian, dissident and diplomat Jaroslav Šedivý.

The Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk was also awarded in memoriam to Eliška Wagnerová, a former senator, president of the Supreme Court and vice-president of the Constitutional Court. Pavel also honoured social worker and human rights activist Elena Gorolová, who the Office of the President said had made a significant contribution to securing compensation for women who were unlawfully sterilised. The seventh recipient of the second-highest honour was Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines, one of the children saved from the Nazis by Nicholas Winton, who officials said had played a key role in spreading his legacy, particularly among young people.