Plzen, West Bohemia, Sept 7 (CTK) – The Sudeten-German Landsmannschaft (SL) homeland association will hold a congress focused on Czech-German municipal cooperation in Plzen at the end of the week, Rudolf Kucera, from the Paneuropean Union of Bohemia and Moravia, told CTK on Wednesday.
The Landsmannschaft organisation, representing Sudeten German deportees and refugees from the Sudetenland in former Czechoslovakia, has received a subsidy from the Czech German Fund for the Future for the event that has also stirred up protests.
The Paneuropean Union is a partner of the application for a subsidy for consultancy.
The Landsmannschaft’s event caused indignation of the Communists (KSCM) and the Association of Freedom Fighters (CSBS) that will stage a demonstration against it on Friday.
“This is the first similar congress in the Czech Republic,” said SL spokeswoman Hildegard Schuster.
The organisers have chosen Plzen since it is easily accessible both from the Czech side and Germany, she added.
The Sudeten Germans expect the congress to boost border cooperation. The latest joint municipal congress took place in Passau in 2003.
Experience exchange and lectures should inspire Czech and German local politicians, Sudeten-German partners and representatives of the German minority in the Czech Republic to further deepen cooperation, SL chairman Bernd Posselt said on the invitation to the congress.
Kucera said the event would focus only on particular cooperation projects. This is no party conference of the Landsmannschaft, he added.
The congress is to present joint projects of Czech and German towns. Even the mayor of Regensburg, Bavaria, is to attend it and talk on cooperation. However, though Regensburg has been a partner town of Plzen for over 20 years, Plzen representatives will not attend the congress, Plzen Town Hall spokeswoman Eva Barborkova said.
Leaders of the KSCM regional and municipal organisations have sharpy criticised the event.
“This is a continuing, very dangerous trend of the past years when, after the opening of the Sudeten-German Landsmannschaft’s office in Prague and the participation of some government ministers in the SL meetings, its events are more and more often moving to the sovereign territory of our country,” the Communists said in its press release.
The CSBS says it does not agree with the SL event in Plzen and that it will stage a protest meeting outside the hotel as its venue on Friday, Jaroslav Bukovsky, from the CSBS’s Plzen branch, told CTK.
“We are demonstrating against such event. This is also a demonstration by Sudeten Germans – an attempt to return to their beloved native land. However, these Germans should never forget how they behaved to their country before the WWII outbreak, how they treated their original Czech fellow citizens. We and most of our elderly population do not consider them our fellow citizens,” Bukovsky said.
