Entities with focus on past differ on presidential election

Prague, Jan 22 (CTK) - The Czech Freedom Fighters' Union, the Czech Council of Seniors and several other organisations supported Tuesday Milos Zeman (Party of Citizens' Rights, SPOZ) in the January 25-26 direct presidential election run-off.

The organisations' representatives criticised Zeman's rival, Foreign Minister and TOP 09 chairman Karel Schwarzenberg for his stands on the post-war transfer of Sudeten Germans and his participation in the centre-right coalition government of Petr Necas (Civic Democrats, ODS).

The Germans were transferred after World War Two under the decrees issued by then Czechoslovak president Edvard Benes.

The decrees provided for the confiscation of the property of collaborators, traitors, ethnic Germans and Hungarians, except for those who themselves suffered under the Nazis. They also formed a basis for the transfer of the two ethnic groups from Czechoslovakia after the war.

The Confederation of Political Prisoners, associating the communist regime's victims, for its part supported Schwarzenberg Tuesday.

It said it is unacceptable for it that Zeman, former Social Democrat prime minister, asked the Communists' (KSCM) support before the first round of the presidential election.

"We cannot be standing by as Karel Schwarzenberg, a man who speaks about the transfer of Germans from our borderland, a decision on which was made by the victorious powers at the Potsdam conference (in 1945), as about expulsion become president who is at the same time the armed forces' chief commander," the above organisations' representatives said.

The organisations called themselves "a patriotic forum."

They also challenged Schwarzenberg's participation in the apology made to the Sudeten Germans after the fall of communism in end-1989.

The apology was made by then Czechoslovak president Vaclav Havel. Schwarzenberg was his chancellor.

The organisations also say Schwarzenberg "is a man who is closely linked to Necas's government. The consequences of its management impact on a crushing majority of us, citizens," they said.

The Confederation of Political Prisoners said, on the contrary, Schwarzenberg is "a man who has the qualities and character that a statesman and president ought to have," deputy chairman of the Confederation Frantisek Sedivy told CTK Tuesday.

He said Zeman cannot be forgiven for having asked the Communists for support before the election.

"He asked for support those who were murdering us, who were sentencing us to dozens of years in prison and who decimated the economy of this country. We cannot respect someone who asks them for support," Sedivy said.

World War Two veteran Alexander Beer, who has been awarded with the White Lion Order for his participation in the eastern front fighting, for his part, sharply criticised Schwarzenberg.

He said with his recent statements about former Czechoslovak president Edvard Benes he "grossly degraded the heroism of Czech patriots and soldiers."

"A majority of Germans in the borderland formed the fifth column, they behaved disgracefully to their homeland - the Czechoslovak Republic. That is why their transfer in consistence with the international treaties of the victorious powers after World War Two was substantiated and just," Beer said.

Schwarzenberg said in a recent Czech Television debate with Zeman "what we did in 1945 would Tuesday be condemned as a gross violation of human rights. The then government, including president Benes, would probably find itself in The Hague."

He later said the Benes decrees cannot be abolished and that history cannot be returned back.

Sedivy said the Germans' post-war transfer is a historical event and it should not play any fundamental role in the selection of the future president.

"Schwarzenberg commented on the issue in a certain situation, in a few words and I did not consider his statement seriously as an integral conclusion," Sedivy said.

He said the Sudeten Germans' fate must be talked about in the historical context while it must be taken into consideration that Nazi crimes preceded it and that it also resulted in the devastation of the Czech borderland.