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Current AffairsPolice crack down on women’s branch of Czech neo-Nazi movement

14-02-2012 16:09 | Daniela Lazarová

Illustrative photo: Filip Jandourek The Czech police have cracked down on a group called Resistance Women Unity, a women´s branch of the Czech neo-Nazi movement National Resistance. Fifteen women were arrested and charged with promoting and supporting a movement aimed at suppressing human rights and freedoms. I spoke to Miroslav Mareš of Masaryk University in Brno, one of the Czech Republic’s leading experts on far-right extremism, to find out more about the role of women in neo-Nazi groups in the present day Czech Republic. More

Current AffairsRoma kids from special schools put Czech education system to shame in Great Britain

13-02-2012 16:17 | Daniela Lazarová

Thousands of teachers around the country are up in arms. They are unhappy about the government’s plans to gradually phase out special schools – or schools for children with a mental or physical handicap – and integrate as many of these children as possible into the education mainstream. More

Czech HistoryPetr Novák: The man who wrote the soundtrack for the Prague Spring

07-02-2012 16:45 | Coilin O'Connor

Petr Novák Petr Novák's unmistakeable, delicate tenor voice is synonymous with Czechoslovak society of the late 1960s. This talented musician shot to fame in this country at the time of the Prague Spring, when his gentle love songs influenced by Western pop groups like The Beatles were hugely popular among young Czechs. His success during this era, however, proved to be short-lived and his career subsequently stagnated under the influence of communist repression and his own problems with alcohol. More

From the ArchivesPaul Robeson in Prague: paying homage to Dvořák and socialism

04-02-2012 02:01 | David Vaughan

Paul Robeson In last week’s From the Archives we featured Martin Luther King, interviewed by Czechoslovak Radio in 1963. But Dr King was not the first civil rights campaigner to address Czech and Slovak radio listeners. Four years earlier, in June 1959, Paul Robeson came to Prague, to take part in an international left-wing cultural congress. Robeson was a man of many talents – singer, actor, athlete, writer and civil rights activist. He never concealed his sympathies with the communist regimes of the Eastern Bloc, and his political views – combined with the colour of his skin – earned him virtual pariah status in many sections of the US political establishment. This culminated in 1950 when he was refused a passport. More

Current AffairsScandal-plagued Plzeň law faculty will have to close its doors

02-02-2012 16:33 | Daniela Lazarová

The law faculty at Plzeň university The scandal-plagued Plzeň faculty of law appears to have come to the end of the road. On Wednesday the Czech Accreditation Commission announced that the West-Bohemian law faculty’s undergraduate programme had failed to pass muster and its accreditation would not be extended past this autumn. On Thursday some 300 of the faculty’s 2,000 students gathered outside their school to protest against the decision and have appealed to Education Minister Josef Dobeš to intervene. However their chances of success are meager, since under Czech law the minister is not in a position to question the verdict of the accreditation commission. We spoke to its chairwoman prof. Vladimíra Dvořáková to find out what was behind the commission’s decision. More

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