Czech Republic sentences teacher who denied Russian crimes in Ukraine

A Prague court has sentenced teacher Martina Bednářová to a suspended sentence for denying Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

Bednářová raised the topic of Ukraine in a lesson for eighth graders in early April 2022. She told the students that the Russians’ actions were a justified way of resolving the situation and claimed that “nothing is happening” in Kyiv, RPI reported.

When the students said that they had seen footage of the shelling of Kyiv on Czech television news, Bednářová replied that state television was biased. She also stated that, in her opinion, Ukrainian “Nazi groups in Donbas” had been “systematically destroying Russians” since 2014.

The Prague 6 District Court heard Bednářová’s case for the third time. The teacher was acquitted twice, and the second verdict was upheld by the appeals court. However, in January, the Czech Supreme Court overturned the verdicts and sent the case back for retrial.

The prosecution demanded a suspended sentence for the now-dismissed Prague teacher and a five-year ban on teaching, educational, and other work with children.

Bednářová’s defenders invoked freedom of speech, stressed the value of “tolerance for other opinions,” and pointed out that some of the opinions expressed by the woman are now being expressed by politicians, such as Donald Trump.

As a result, Martina Bednářová was found guilty of violating education law, internal school rules, and the labor code and was sentenced to seven months’ probation with a 20-month probationary period.

Bednářová was also banned from teaching for three years. In addition, she will have to take a course in media literacy.

The verdict is not final. The convicted woman, who is running for the Chamber of Deputies in the upcoming elections on the Prague list of the Czech communist movement Stačilo!, called the court political.

Bednářová also said that in Ukraine, “the Russian population was tortured,” “the mass murder in the Ukrainian city of Bucha has not yet been investigated, and the media is providing false information about the war.” These statements match Russian war propaganda spread by Kremlin media but don’t match the reality.