Hypocrisy is the motto of Czech politicians
It's not something that happens automatically and it's not banal: Human rights are a fundamental pillar of modern society, and protecting them without compromise is the responsibility of each of us - all the more so of those who hold political power in their hands. The testament to that has been the far too long, often bloody, painful history of the struggle for civil and human rights worldwide. Now we are witnessing how Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský, for example, is being seen as somebody who is "supporting human rights and defending the oppressed" notwithstanding his unscrupulous support for Israeli war crimes of genocidal dimensions.
The imperative to protect human rights and to respect international law must also be heard by those who follow dimensions which are more pragmatic than ethical, because if we protect and respect these rights just at some times and not at others, only for some of our fellow human beings and not for others, then it follows that nobody is actually secure in those rights.
In this regard it is, to put it quite mildly, problematic that Czech Foreign Affairs Minister Lipavský is demonstrating an alarming hypocrisy on key questions related to the defense of human rights. Through his attitude toward the war crimes committed by the State of Israel in Gaza, where it has long not been possible to speak of strikes on military targets, but of the razing of most of the Gaza Strip to the ground together with its inhabitants, including children (the estimates of the highly respected British medical journal The Lancet say several hundreds of thousands of victims remain beneath the rubble of the bombed-out residential neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, etc.) and the blocking of deliveries of humanitarian aid, he is legitimizing the violation of such rights and undercutting the international conventions by which the Czech Republic is also bound.
Lipavský is not alone as far as the high representatives of the Czech Republic are concerned – there is a discourse defending the selectivity of human rights and the idea that ethnic purges, war crimes and even genocide can sometimes basically be all right if they are being committed by our “ally”, advocated by many political colleagues of his, from Prime Minister Petr Fiala to Defense Minister Jana Černochová to one of the vice-presidents of the Chamber of Deputies, Jan Bartošek.
To give a specific example, Fiala has repeatedly spread the absurd claim that democratically-elected representatives are automatically incapable of perpetrating not just war crimes, but any crimes. He most recently said this when the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants on 21 November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and for former Israeli Defense Minister Joav Galant for the war crime of using hunger or starvation as a tactic (and also issued a warrant for a representative of Hamas, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri (Deif)): “The motion of the ICC Prosecutor to issue an arrest warrant for a representative of a democratically-elected government together with the leader of an Islamist terrorist organization is horrifying and totally unacceptable. We must not forget that it was Hamas who attacked Israel in October [2023] and who murdered, harmed and kidnapped thousands of innocent people. It is exactly that totally unprovoked terrorist attack that led to the current war in Gaza and the suffering of civilians in Gaza, Israel and Lebanon.” Here Fiala again showed an unprecedented degree of hypocritical ignorance, as it was Netanyahu in particular who has threatened this October to turn Lebanon into another Gaza.
Arrest warrants were issued last year by that same tribunal, the ICC, for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Children’s Rights Commissioner for the Kremlin, Maria Lvova-Belova, accused of committing war crimes in Ukraine, and Czech diplomats welcomed them, absolutely correctly, with enthusiasm and with respect for that decision of the ICC. On that occasion the Czech Foreign Affairs Ministry, led by Lipavský, let it be known that “Putin is doubtless responsible for these war crimes and for the crime of aggression and should be brought to trial. We very much welcome that the ICC has taken this step and we appreciate that it managed to do so in such a short time.”
It is impossible to avoid the impression that Czech diplomacy’s respect for international law, international obligations, international conventions and international tribunals depends on whom we are “friends” with and who not. To believe that our necessary, praiseworthy solidarity towards Ukraine and our support for the ICC when it issued the arrest warrant for Putin is determined by the fact that our republic, our society, recognizes the most fundamental human rights and the universal value of human life would be naive, I fear. I believe the motor of solidarity and support for many people here is not respect for such values, but primarily hatred of Russia. The limits to our flimsy, hypocritical “solidarity” with Ukrainians were displayed in full force by how the Czech Republic approached the Romani refugees from Ukraine.
When I read, in a report from the Czech News Agency (ČTK) that was reprinted by various news servers, that through Lipavský “the tradition inspired by a breakfast held in 1988 by French President Mitterand for Czechoslovak dissidents lives on as a symbol of support for all who fight for a better world,” it is impossible to stay quiet. Lipavský and the others, by expressing their uncompromising support for the State of Israel without clearly, emphatically condemning the brutal war crimes committed against the civilian population in Gaza, are showing how alarmingly selective their approach is. This undermines the credibility of the Czech Republic’s proclaimed support for human rights in the world, not that of the ICC.
This selectivity in the concept of human rights is in direct contradiction with what the world community has agreed on, namely, the fact that human rights are indivisible and universal, meaning they are valid for everyone without exception. The principle of collective guilt, which Lipavský and the other Czech political representatives are helping to legitimize applying to the Palestinians through their public appearances, is exactly the same principle that the Nazis – who were also democratically elected at the time – promoted towards Jews, Roma, “homosexuals” and other groups of people whom they found inconvenient.
It is clear that as far as geopolitical issues are concerned, the complex context of history and politics should be taken into account. However, that does not mean political leaders can leave aside the principle that war crimes must be investigated and punished – including when they are perpetrated by our “allies”. Instead, Fiala, Lipavský, Černochová and their other colleagues in politics have decided to take a stance that contravenes international law and fundamental human values as well.
