The upcoming 50th anniversary of the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact troops on August 21st, 1968, is causing a storm on the Czech political scene.
Although President Miloš Zeman considers the occupation a crime, his spokesman has said that Zeman will not speak on the anniversary. Many politicians do not like it.
“No speech is coming. The President was brave at a time when courage was not cheap. And this is more valuable than a thousand speeches after fifty years,” president’s spokesman Jiří Ovčáček said on Twitter.
This has triggered criticism from some other politicians. “I urge you not to neglect your constitutional duties and to duly remind an event that resulted not only in hundreds of deaths during the Soviet invasion but also in more than 100,000 emigrants fleeing from Czechoslovakia by the end of 1969 and hundreds of thousands of people, who were fired from work or forbidden to study because they refused to sign consent to the Soviet occupation, ” wrote Jiří Pospíšil, chairman of TOP 09 to the president in an open letter.
