Muhammad cartoons posted in the streets of Brno
Posters with a Danish cartoon of the Muslim prophet Muhammad appeared on Wednesday in the center of Brno, South Moravia.
The cartoons, originally created by Danish artists, sparked worldwide controversy and protests, especially in Muslim countries, two years ago.
The posters depict Muhammad with a bomb on his head instead of a turban. The image is accompanied by words "Freedom is not for free".
Schwarzenberg: intolerance, not freedom of speech
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has sharply condemned the affair.
"In his time, the prophet Muhammad didn't know what bombs were, it's complete ridicule. I view such posters as being an expression of intolerance and aggression on the part of the people who have displayed them," commented Minister of Foreign Affairs Karel Schwarzenberg.
"I consider it a sad fact that something like that has emerged in the Czech nation. It has nothing to do with the freedom of speech," added Schwarzenberg.
"According to our opinion, no action that aims at inciting religious hostility or that may obviously lead to such ends can be defended by making references to the freedom of speech and expression," explained the ministry's spokeswoman Zuzana Opletalová.
Currently, the issue is being investigated by the police. "Anti-extremism unit is handling the case and experts will be called on to offer their opinions," said the spokeswoman for the Brno police Andrea Procházková.
"Experts will be able to determine whether this can be considered a crime or not," added Procházková.
Via Aktuálně.cz
UPDATE: Atlas, Gateway Pundit and Islam in Europe link. Thanks!
The Soviet Union Russians just can't understand why they're not loved by central and eastern Europeans.Seeing red
The Foreign Affairs Ministry is rushing to smooth tensions after controversy erupted over a Soviet war memorial in south Moravia that's pitted the Russian consulate against a local politician.
The monument, beside a church in the Královo Pole district of Brno, commemorates 326 Red Army soldiers who died liberating the city from Nazi forces in 1945. Above the interred remains of the dead sits a stone obelisk, erected in 1946, that’s crowned with a five-pointed star and embossed at the base with a hammer and sickle. A message in Russian commemorates the unidentified dead.
But during the night June 25, the hammer and sickle disappeared, and none other than Královo Pole’s deputy mayor has claimed responsibility. Two days before the memorial was to be officially unveiled after months of renovations, René Pelán called a stonemason for help. Pelán was so opposed to the hammer and sickle that he himself took power tools to the stone to help grind it off.
“The hammer and sickle are communist symbols, and communism is connected with dictatorship and a reign of terror,” said Pelán, who called the memorial “a monster.” As for the star, “I have nothing against [it],” he said. “That’s the official symbol of the Red Army.”
At the unveiling June 27, police had to be called to detain protesters who showed up to support Pelán’s move, the Czech News Agency (ČTK) reported. Alexei Kolmakov, attaché at Brno’s Russian consulate, arrived to observe the fracas.
Russian consular officials refused to comment, but in a June 28 press release called Pélan’s actions “a deliberate disgracing” of the Red Army victims and an attempt to “rewrite history.”
Such as the liberation of Plzeň?In late May, when Pelán proposed replacing the monument with a general one to all World War II victims, the consulate released a statement saying they would consider any steps to remove the memorial as “hostile.”
Looks like Královo Pole’s deputy mayor has called their bluff.And his actions told the Soviets Russians to STFU, already.
Kralovo Pole in Brno is dealing with a delicate matter at the moment. The district has a large memorial to Soviet soldiers who fell in April 1945 while liberating the city from Nazi rule and were buried there. The memorial displayed Soviet symbols - the five-pointed star and the hammer and sickle - ever since it was erected in 1946. The symbols were removed in the early 1990s, but now the star has returned.
The monument in question is in fact a military burial site where, according to the inscription in Cyrillic, 326 soldiers of the Red Army were interred. The monument was erected in May 1946 and decorated with a hammer and sickle on the front and a five-pointed red star on top. These emblems, commonly seen as representing communism, were removed after 1989, but the star returned last year after pressure from the Russian General Consulate in Brno.
Deputy Mayor of Kralovo Pole Rene Pelan says he understands the attitude of the Russians. "They are very sensitive about it now, but I wish they would understand that nobody wants to disrespect the burials sites or the memorials to the liberators of Brno, but rather start a debate of the form and appearance of the monument. I suggested removing the monument and installing a boulder with the inscription 'To all victims of WWII'. It is still debated whether there are only Red Army soldiers in the grave, or maybe some Germans, or Rumanians, or even civilians. So that text that only celebrates the Red Army, might not be completely true."
This proposition met with little appreciation from the Russian Consulate. Alexei Kolmakov, attaché to the General Consulate, would not comment on the matter, but a press release from 22nd May 2007 maintained that any effort to "distort the truth and to libel the Red Army" and any destruction or profanation of the monuments to Soviet soldiers would be seen by the Russians as "adversary".
Not that the Soviets Russians would ever dream of distorting the truth.
