One day after the Czech Republic’s new parliamentary speaker, Tomio Okamura, oversaw the removal of a Ukrainian flag from the Czech parliament building complex, eight more flags have appeared in its stead.
During election campaigning, the leader of the nationalist-populist Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party had vowed to remove all Ukrainian flags from government buildings “within a second" if elected.
A polarizing figure known for his outspoken views on migration and his occasional political stunts, Okamura was declared speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Czech parliament, on November 5. He was elected parliamentary speaker after the SPD joined a governing coalition led by ANO, the party of Andrej Babis, a right-wing populist billionaire and former prime minister.
Okamura has opposed continued funding for Kyiv’s war effort and called for the return of Ukrainian refugees to their home country, citing polls showing nearly half of Czechs see Ukrainians as a threat rather than a benefit to the country’s development.
Ukrainian refugees make up some 3.6 percent of the population of the Czech Republic, the highest ratio in Europe. A recent survey indicated that less than a quarter plan to return to Ukraine once their refugee visas expire.
A Ukrainian flag had hung from the parliament since February 24, 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Soon after Okamura posted video of the flag being removed from the Czech parliament building, in a quiet lane in Prague’s historic center, several opposition politicians responded by unfurling their own Ukrainian flags from windows of the parliament.
“We are returning the flag, which Tomio Okamura shamefully removed today, to the building of the Chamber of Deputies,” the center-left Czech Pirate Party posted, with images of a flag being hung from a window.
The move to informally hang flags from the parliament has sparked heated debate online. The most liked comment under the Pirate Party’s post declared “symbolically [the Ukrainian flag] was enough for maybe three months, but why should it hang there into the fourth year?”
Almost directly across the lane from the removed Ukrainian flag, an Israeli flag hangs on the parliament building that was installed after the October 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas militants. Okamura responded to criticism over the apparent selective targeting of the Ukrainian flag by suggesting the fate of the Israeli flag may be discussed in the future.
Elsewhere in Prague, a Ukrainian banner flag was removed from the Czech Republic’s National Museum in late August after hanging for more than three years from the Prague landmark. Protesters held a rally demanding the flag’s return on October 30.
