On Wednesday, 28^th May 2003, Jana Bobošikova - one of the leading television journalists in the Czech Republic, whose weekly political discussion programme on the main independent TV station, TV Nova, is a central event in the political life of the country - received a phone call from the police. She was told that she was the subject of a criminal investigation for alarming the public and spreading false information and that she must come to the police station for questioning; if she failed to co-operate with the police, a court order would be issued forbidding her from working as a journalist for an indefinite period.

Mrs Bobošikova went to the police station the following day, Thursday, 29^th May where she was there subjected to an interrogation which lasted more than six hours. The police were especially interested in an interview which Mrs Bobošikova had conducted with Jan Kasal deputy chairman of the Christian Democrat Party (KDU-CSL) in May 2002. The police captain who conducted the interrogation repeatedly asked Mrs. Bobošikova what she had in mind by asking certain questions, and why she chose to ask one particular question at the start of the interview. Outraged by the brazenly political nature of the criminal cross-examination, Mrs Bobošikova, who was accompanied by her lawyer, replied that, as a journalist, she had the right to ask whatever questions she wanted.

The cause of the criminal investigation was a complaint which had been received from a woman, a "private citizen" in Olomouc, dated 4^th June 2002. BHHRG, whose representative visited Prague the day after Mrs. Bobošikova's police interrogation, has seen a copy of this letter. It is hand-written, and contains numerous, odd errors. For instance, it breaks off at one point in mid-sentence, while the same sentence is repeated later on in the text. In other words, the letter seems to have been copied out rather clumsily from a pre-written text. When the lady citizen submitted further material to bolster her complaint in December that year, she appended a typed transcript of the Bobošikova interview. At the bottom of the page is the electronic address of the internal mailing system of the Czech Parliament: the "private citizen" obviously has good connections inside the political machine. Indeed, it looks suspiciously like she was put up to it.

In the offending first question, Mrs Bobošikova had asked Mr. Kasal to respond to allegations that the Christian Democratic Party (KDU-CSL) is connected to the German Expellees Association and, in particular, to the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft which campaigns for the revocation of the Beneš decrees. These decrees were passed in 1945 and 1946 to give effect to the decision taken by the Allies at Postdam in 1945 to transfer the ethnic German population of Czechoslovakia into Germany. The Sudeten Germans, it will be recalled, were agitated by Hitler to campaign for their "repatriation to the Reich", which duly happened when, following the Munich agreement in September 1938 between Germany, Italy, Britain and France, Nazi Germany used the Sudeten German question as a pretext for occupying the whole of Bohemia and Moravia, and for establishing a "protectorate" on the territory of the Czech half of the former Czechoslovakia.

Considering that the Sudeten question was instrumentalised to make Czechoslovakia a victim of Hitlerite aggression, and that it is therefore part of the origins of the Second World War, it is understandable if many Czechs feel uncomfortable that contemporary Austrian, German and European Parliament politicians have reopened the issue now. Historical memories aside, the revocation of the decrees would inevitably lead to a flood of claims for property restitution, or for compensation, because the expropriations of 1945-1946 might then retrospectively be declared illegal. The Czech situation is therefore somewhat comparable to the situation of Israel when faced with the demand for a "right of return" for the descendants of Palestinians driven out of their homes in 1948. In the Czech case, the Germans might not physically return to live in the Sudetenland; but the cost of paying compensation to the descendants of 3,000,000 Sudeten Germans would be far more than the Czech state could sustain. It would be a mortal blow to the state's finances.

Yet many people in the European Union have called for exactly this outcome. In April 1999, the European Parliament called on the Czech Republic to rescind the decrees, thereby implying that their revocation should be a condition for EU membership. Austrian politicians like the Governor of Carinthia, Jörg Haider, did campaign, in 2001 and 2002, for Austria to veto Czech accession to the EU if the decrees were not rescinded. The leader of the Sudeten Germans' Association, the Landsmannschaft, the Christian Democrat MEP, Bernd Posselt, has said that admitting the Czech Republic to the EU with the Beneš decrees still in force would have an effect on the European system comparable to that on a computer of importing a virus.

The row over the Sudeten German question rumbled on throughout 2002, and led to sharp exchanges of words between the then Czech prime minister, Miloš Zeman and Jörg Haider. The row was also discussed by the Austrian and Czech presidents, Thomas Klestil and Václav Havel. The Christian Democrat candidate for the post of Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Bavarian prime minister, Edmund Stoiber, stoked up the flames even further when he demanded, in the strongest terms, that the Beneš decrees be revoked. In May, moreover, the Bishop of Olomouc, said Mass at the annual meeting of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft in Nuremberg. Since the KDU-CSL is usually considered to be close to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Bohemia and Moravia, and since the issue was very much in the news, it was entirely natural for Mrs. Bobošikova to raise it in the interview. The notion that such a matter is an appropriate subject for a criminal investigation is grotesque.

Alas, this is not the only example of intimidation of the independent media by the pro-EU government of the Czech Republic. On 15^th May, the Director of TV Nova, the businessman and Senator, Vladimir Železny, was dismissed from his post with one hour's notice. BHHRG's representatives have interviewed Senator Železny twice before ^{[1 ]} and met him again the day after Mrs. Bobošikova's visit to the police station. Mr Železny alleged that he had been sacked on the direct orders of the Interior Minister, Stanislav Gross. If true, this would confirm that the Czech authorities are guilty of gross interference in media freedom in the Czech Republic. Mr Železny also confirmed that the government had demanded that TV Nova broadcast, for free, a series of pro-European advertisements in the run-up to the referendum on EU accession which is to be held on 13^th and 14^th June. In both cases, the threat was made, according to the new majority owners of TV Nova, that these were conditions set by the government if TV Nova was to keep its broadcasting licence. Mr. Železny was famous, among other things, for his weekly discussion programme, "Call the Director", in which members of the public could ring up and discuss things with him on air. This programme was axed as soon as Mr. Železny ceased to be the director of the company.

The result of these actions is that there is now a massive imbalance, both in the electronic media and in the press, in favour of the "Yes" camp in the forthcoming EU referendum. Even though a major political party, the Communist Party of Bohemia & Moravia, (KSČM) is against EU accession (it polled 18% in last June's elections) and even though the main opposition party, the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) tends be critical of the terms of EU accession, there is little outlet for euro-critical views in the media of the Czech Republic. Opinion polls show that Czechs are among the least euro-enthusiastic people in the accession countries. The political class, especially the government, therefore has a strong motive for wishing to silence the voices of those, like Mr. Železny, who favour open debate about EU membership. This means that the political "campaign" in the run-up to the EU vote can in no way be called democratic, since the main media outlets are all unashamedly biased in favour of EU entry, while euro-critical voices are marginalized.

As it happens, the questions Mr. Železny asks are directly related to the ones for which Mrs. Bobošikova was so brutally harassed by the police. Elected Senator for the Southern Moravian region of Znojmo last October, Mr. Železny has taken a strong professional interest, as a member of the Senate Committee on European Integration, in the impact EU membership will have on Czech agriculture. Land in the Znojmo region, which is on the border with Austria, is overwhelmingly agricultural: 71% of the region's income comes from farming. The fields there are properly husbanded, in stark contrast to the collapsed state of agriculture in neighbouring Poland. In fact, Czech agriculture was one of the few genuinely efficient parts of the Czechoslovak economy at the end of the Cold War. 4.8% of the population produced twice the country's agricultural needs, and exports were strong. Indeed, the country could have produced up to five times its own needs. This compares with Poland, where 21% of the population is required to provide for the needs of the population. The quality of agricultural produce was high, and the sector was genuinely competitive.

As soon as the Berlin Wall came down, Austrian farmers, whose land is adjacent to the farms in Southern Moravia - the whole area, on both sides of the border, forms a continuous, gently undulating plain -- realised Czech agriculture could be a serious competitor. Wine in Znojmo is produced for about