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 college 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 response to the Ceska Justice information portal. The courtroom reportedly mentioned Bednarova misused her function 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. In response to media experiences, Bednarova described Russia’s navy motion of Ukraine as a “justified method of resolving the state of affairs” and forged 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 towards 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.
Decide 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 known as the case politically pushed. The decision shouldn’t be ultimate, as she has the fitting to attraction.
The District Court docket initially acquitted Bednarova twice, with an appeals chamber backing the second ruling on free speech grounds. In January, nevertheless, the Supreme Court docket overturned the selections and ordered a brand new assessment to evaluate whether or not her actions met the factors for a prison offense.
Prague has taken a strongly anti-Russian stance in recent times, particularly in response to the Ukraine battle, changing into one in all Kiev’s staunchest supporters.
In its 2023 human rights report, the Russian International Ministry labeled the Czech authorities’s actions as “Russophobic” and expressed concern over freedom of speech within the nation.
It additionally raised issues over the functioning of media within the Czech Republic and famous what it known as a gentle drift towards anti-Russian sentiment.
Russian will even be phased out as a second language by 2034 beneath 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 group.
The Czech Republic, as soon as a part of communist Czechoslovakia and a Soviet-aligned Jap Bloc member, turned impartial in 1993 after the 1989 Velvet Revolution and the Soviet Union’s collapse. Since then, the nation has eliminated or altered tons of 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.
