William Nattrass William Nattrass

It has become illegal to support Russia in the Czech Republic

Pro-Ukraine demonstrators in Prague (photo: Getty)

Supporting Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine is now socially and morally beyond the pale in most of the western world. Even being wary of arms deliveries to Ukraine is, in most places, considered wrong. But in the Czech Republic things are being taken a step further, as those who express controversial views of the war are prosecuted under legal restrictions on free speech. 

Ambiguous laws are suddenly being used to criminalise the views of a significant portion of the population

A young man who attended an anti-government protest in Prague earlier this year wearing a backpack with a ‘Z’ sticker and a jacket with the emblem of the Wagner Group stitched onto the sleeve has been handed a suspended six-month prison sentence, fined, and – in bizarrely medieval fashion – banned from staying within Prague city limits for a year. Police detained him after spotting the symbols on his backpack and put him under investigation for ‘denying, questioning, approving and justifying genocide,’ which is a criminal offence. 

This is not the only case of its kind. A primary school teacher in Prague has been investigated by police after pupils recorded her saying ‘nothing is happening’ in Kyiv and that ‘Ukrainian Nazi groups’ have been killing Russians in the Donbas since 2014. She lost her job and police have submitted her case for indictment, again for the offence of approving genocide. She could face between six months and three years in jail. 

In the most well-known of these cases, the ringleader of the Czech Republic’s powerful anti-government protest movement, Ladislav Vrabel, faces trial for spreading ‘alarmist messages’ with his claim that the Czech Republic would use nuclear bombs against Russia as part of the start of a global nuclear war. With Czech police reserving the right to lock you up if you ‘intentionally cause the danger of serious concern to at least part of the population of a place by spreading an alarmist message that is false,’ he could face up to two years in prison. 

The Czech Republic’s legal restrictions on free speech are nothing new.

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