The Czech presidency softened President Petr Pavel’s statements on Friday about the need to monitor Russians living in Western countries, which he compared on Thursday to Japanese citizens in the US during World War II, AFP and Agerpres reported.
These Russian citizens “need to be monitored much more than before because they are citizens of a nation that is waging an aggressive war” against Ukraine, Petr Pavel said in an interview published on Thursday by Radio Europa Liberă.
Asked to clarify his claims, he added that they should be “under the control of the security services.”
He then gave the example of citizens of Japanese descent in the United States between 1942 and 1945. 120,000 people of Japanese descent in the US were not just monitored but placed in internment camps, a policy for which President George W. Bush apologized. to Japan in 1991.
The Czech Republic says its president simply wants “more attention” to Russians abroad
A spokeswoman for the Czech president insisted on Friday that he “didn’t talk about internment or persecution (of Russian citizens) at all.”
The president resorted to this example, she added, only to show “that restrictive measures against citizens of an enemy country are not new and that in the past they were applied much more severely.”
It’s just that the special services “pay more attention” to Russian citizens living in the Czech Republic, since Moscow openly threatens this country and its Western allies with reprisals for supporting Ukraine.
“Of course, not every person is a risk,” she added.
Even Putin’s opponents expressed outrage at the Czech president’s comment
Thursday’s remarks by President Pavlo, a reserve general and former NATO commander, immediately sparked outrage among some Russians living in the West, some 10.8 million people.
“Honestly, I can’t believe that the president of the Czech Republic is simply proposing to put Russian citizens in concentration camps,” journalist Maria Pevchih, an associate of Oleksii Navalny, reacted on Twitter.
She suggested that the special services focus on very rich Russians who own real estate in the Czech Republic, rather than on independent journalists or activists.
Since the beginning of the invasion, Prague has provided significant military and humanitarian aid to Kyiv and taken in about half a million refugees. Pavlo visited Ukraine in April, a month after taking office.
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Source: Hot News
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