Czech MP Turek apologizes to Hnutí Duha activists by court order

Czech MP Turek has officially apologized, under a court ruling, to the environmental movement Hnutí Duha — he had accused the group of causing deaths during a flood and called its members “parasites.” He sent the apology to the movement’s email address, and the court also ordered him to publish it on his Facebook page.

In the text of the apology, which became part of the court ruling, Turek acknowledged that on 24 April he wrote on his Facebook page that several people had died during a flood because Hnutí Duha’s protests had prevented a necessary dam from being built. He had called the movement’s members “parasites that need to be exterminated like rodents.” According to the apology, this claim was untrue and amounted to an unlawful attack on the movement’s reputation.

Hnutí Duha filed the lawsuit after that post, and the court heard the case in mid-September. Turek did not respond to the suit, so the court issued what is known as a default judgment — in the movement’s favor.

“Mr Turek’s apology is a satisfaction for Hnutí Duha. We hope it will lead to greater restraint in his future public statements about us. If he continues making such statements, we are prepared to defend ourselves against them in court again,” said the movement’s director, Zuzana Lenhartová.

This is not the only apology a court has recently ordered the MP to make: he previously lost a case against the company Seznam, where he was likewise ordered to apologize publicly.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz