The teacher will not be punished for her statements about Ukraine, the court confirmed the acquittal

Commercial presentation Update: 05/06/2024 11:31
Issued by: 05/06/2024, 10:19

Prague – Prague teacher Martina Bednářová, who faced indictment for denying Russian war crimes in Ukraine, will not be punished. Today, the Court of Appeal upheld her acquittal. He rejected the appeal of the public prosecutor’s office, which initially requested an eight-month suspended sentence for the former Czech woman, as well as a five-year ban on pedagogic, educational or other work with children. The Czech woman, who discussed the topic of the Russian invasion with the eighth graders in the style lesson, insists on her statements.

“The defendant cannot be viewed as Master Jan Hus, who was ultimately burned at the stake for his views. But as far as criminal law is concerned, we believe that her actions did not reach such a level that she could be punished by the means of criminal law,” said the president of the appeals panel Hana Chaloupková of the Prague Municipal Court. She added that “a lot of things” can be blamed on the defendant in terms of ethics and pedagogy. However, after the evidence has been provided, it cannot be concluded that the teacher denies any specific war crimes or crimes against peace. She thus did not fulfill the factual essence of the crime in question, the judge explained.

Chaloupková’s Senate already decided on the matter last fall, when it annulled Bednářová’s acquittal and returned the case to the District Court for Prague 6 to supplement the evidence. He then acquitted the woman of the charges for the second time in January this year. Today, after the rejection of the appeal, the State Prosecutor’s Office announced that it will consider filing an appeal with the Supreme Court.

Bednářová opened up the topic of Ukraine while teaching at Na Dlouhé lán Elementary School in early April 2022, i.e. a few weeks after the start of the Russian invasion. According to the indictment, in class she tried to justify war crimes against peace by saying that it was an excusable way of dealing with the situation on the part of the Russians. She told the students that nothing was happening in Kyiv. When they objected that they had seen a burning city on Czech TV news, she told them that public television was biased. She also stated that since 2014, Ukrainian Nazi groups in the Donbas have been systematically exterminating Russians, including children, for example by burning and flaying them alive. Some students contradicted the teacher and recorded her explanation. It was from this recording that the courts were based.

Bednářová stands by her statements, according to her, journalists lied about the situation in Ukraine. She described her process as political. “Is this state really prosecuting its own citizens to please the Ukrainians?” she asked in the courtroom. She stated that she had gathered indisputable and irrefutable evidence to defend her claims. According to her, the prosecution’s arguments were just ideological Russophobic cries. “No one will tell us that a nuclear power is invincible!”, she said today, among other things, addressing Ukraine. “I think everyone will be surprised by the results of the investigation into the Buča massacre,” she added, criticizing the Czech government for being “immediately clear” in the case of the death of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny.

A teacher with 30 years of experience was fired after the incident, for which she subsequently sued the school. She lost the labor law dispute, because according to the courts, her interpretation violated the school law, the school’s internal regulations and the labor code.

The woman came to court today to be supported by her supporters, who applauded her for her speeches in the corridor. Supporters had previously sent her several hundred thousand crowns in a public fundraiser. Some of the donors attached encouraging messages in which they praised the teacher for her courage and described her as a victim of totalitarian will.

State representative Ondřej Šťastný today refused to downplay the teacher’s actions. “Disinforming and lying to students about such existential matters as a war conflict undermines the entire educational system and can lead to the erosion of democratic values. A democratic legal state must defend itself against this, including through the means of criminal law,” he says. According to him, Bednářová lied to the children that Russian President Vladimir Putin had to enter Ukraine in order to protect the Russian minority there. “It is a similar logic to claiming that Hitler’s Germany had to liquidate our state in order to protect the German population living in the Sudetenland,” he noted.

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