In response to the advertising campaign that featured the youthful face of Prime Minister Stanislav Gross on billboards throughout the country with the slogan "I really mean it" attesting to the PM's sincerity, Stanislav Mareš -- the creator of the "Green Raoul" cartoon in the weekly magazine Reflex -- designed a billboard in the Moravian town of Třebíč showing Osama Bin Laden with the words, "I also really mean it." The idea was a brilliant act of political satire that highlighted the manipulative nature of Gross' campaign.

Within 24 hours of being displayed, Mareš's billboard was taken down by police on the suspicion that "a criminal act" might have been committed. An investigation was then launched into the alleged "crime."

As international human rights organizations have repeatedly pointed out, the Czech Republic has had problems with the remnants of communist-era laws, in particular regarding so-called "verbal crimes." The U.S. Congress, the Helsinki Committee and other human rights organizations have repeatedly demanded that the country abolish its "defamation" and "insult" laws. The U.S. Helsinki Committee lists more than a dozen articles from the Czech Criminal Code that punish opinions expressed verbally and which can be abused to limit freedom of expression. Everyone is familiar with the case of Michal Zítko, who was found guilty for publishing a Czech translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf, a book that can be borrowed from any British or U.S. library and which is freely available on the Internet.

Interestingly, the U.S. Helsinki Committee also criticized the Czech authorities for trying to criminalize anti-American views after the Sept. 11 attacks. In the autumn of 2001, Czech authorities started criminal proceedings against right-wing extremist Jan Kopal for saying that the United States had "deserved the attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon." They also tried to charge a journalist, Tomáš Pecina, who publicly stated that he agreed with Kopal's statement. Both Kopal and Pecina were to be charged under the dubious Article 165 for "approving of a criminal offense."

Usually, under the pressure driven by media interest, official attempts at prosecuting "verbal offences" degenerate into a farce. With Kopal and Pecina, the authorities were eventually embarrassed into dropping the charges. Nevertheless, as Zítko's case illustrates, not all these cases have a happy ending. And what is extremely worrying is that the Czech authorities periodically attempt to enforce articles criminalizing "verbal offences," as the Mareš case now shows.

It would be highly desirable if parliament plucked up the courage to remove all these questionable articles from the Czech Criminal Code once and for all. Regrettably, given the current hysteria generated by the so-called "war on terror," performing such a courageous act in the interests of democracy and free speech is increasingly unlikely. This is a pity, since the "war on terrorism" is largely a fantasy, created by politicians as an instrument for keeping themselves in power. It would appear that free, critical, unorthodox thinking is needed more than ever. And the authorities should be encouraging, not stifling it.

Originally published in Czech Business Weekly HERE