Police removing Tibetan flags during Chinese president Xi Jinping’s visit to the country declared as unlawful by the Prague Municipal Court in Czech Republic on Tuesday. The courts ruling is against an incident where the Czech police ordered two men to remove the flags of Tibet and Taiwan from their windows near the hotel where the Chinese president was staying.
“The Czech police had no right to order two men to remove the flags of Tibet and Taiwan from their windows in a building next to the Hilton Hotel when Chinese President Xi Jinping was staying there during his visit to Prague in 2016, the Prague Municipal Court decided on Tuesday.” said the report in the Prague Daily.
This verdict has also rejected an earlier view of the court upon a previous police intervention where it was declared to be legitimate. The court according to the report said that the police officers had the right to ask the two men to present their identity cards, but they violated law when they ordered the men to remove the flags from the windows and did not let them make a video recording of the intervention.
“The two men, Ladislav Pelcl and Martin Malos, worked in the Diamond Point building next to the Hotel Hilton in Prague-Karlin. To show their protest against violation of human rights by China, they put in their windows two big sheets of paper with the flags of Tibet and Taiwan printed on them.” added the report about the incident.
The police officers immediately arrived afterwards that to order for the sheets to be removed citing potential risk for not being able to monitor movements behind it. However, the defence lawyers said that it could have been monitored with the help of thermal imaging cameras.
“The police should not have been subject to political pressure, which is exactly what seemed to happen in this case. The order to remove Tibetan flags came from the Prague Castle,” Pelcl said on Tuesday in welcoming the verdict of the court. This is a strong message to all countries that whatsoever is the Chinese influence economically, law and order can not be suppressed in a just country like Czech Republic.
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