Martina Bednarova has been given a suspended jail time period within the Czech Republic for calling Moscow’s navy motion “justified”
A Czech courtroom has handed a former instructor a seven-month suspended sentence for expressing pro-Russian views throughout a faculty lesson, native media reported on Thursday.
Martina Bednarova was additionally banned from educating for 3 years and ordered to finish a media literacy course, in line with the Ceska Justice information portal. The courtroom reportedly mentioned Bednarova misused her position by presenting “deceptive data” to college students.
The incident occurred in April 2022, shortly after the escalation of the Ukraine battle, throughout a Czech language lesson at an elementary faculty in Prague. Based on media reviews, Bednarova described Russia’s navy motion of Ukraine as a “justified manner of resolving the scenario” and solid doubt on Czech tv’s protection.
She additionally mentioned “Nazi Ukrainian teams” had been killing Russians since 2014, seemingly referring to Ukrainian nationalist battalions, akin to Azov, which Moscow has accused of committing atrocities in opposition to ethnic Russians in jap Ukraine – a story disputed by Kiev and Western governments. College students recorded the category and alerted faculty officers, resulting in Bednarova’s dismissal.
Choose Eliska Matyasova claimed Bednarova was not merely voicing private views however delivering false data in a classroom the place college students couldn’t query it. Bednarova mentioned her remarks have been a part of a media literacy lesson and referred to as the case politically pushed. The decision will not be last, as she has the precise to enchantment.
The District Courtroom initially acquitted Bednarova twice, with an appeals chamber backing the second ruling on free speech grounds. In January, nonetheless, the Supreme Courtroom overturned the choices and ordered a brand new assessment to evaluate whether or not her actions met the factors for a legal offense.
Prague has taken a strongly anti-Russian stance lately, particularly in response to the Ukraine battle, changing into considered one of Kiev’s staunchest supporters.
In its 2023 human rights report, the Russian Overseas Ministry labeled the Czech authorities’s actions as “Russophobic” and expressed concern over freedom of speech within the nation.
It additionally raised considerations over the functioning of media within the Czech Republic and famous what it referred to as a gentle drift towards anti-Russian sentiment.
Russian can even be phased out as a second language by 2034 underneath new Czech training reforms, with college students restricted to German, French or Spanish. As of late 2023, over 40,000 Russian nationals lived within the nation, making them the fourth-largest international neighborhood.
The Czech Republic, as soon as a part of communist Czechoslovakia and a Soviet-aligned Jap Bloc member, grew to become impartial in 1993 after the 1989 Velvet Revolution and the Soviet Union’s collapse. Since then, the nation has eliminated or altered a whole lot of Soviet-era monuments, with one other wave of removals following the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev and the escalation of the Ukraine battle.
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