Do politicians and authorities deliberately use yellow and blue colours to destroy the Czech national identity and replace the Czech national symbols? No, that's not true: politicians do not neglect Czech insignia at official events, and sometimes yellow and blue, the colours of the Ukrainian flag, are just randomly used colours.
The claim is made in an image used in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on June 26, 2023. It is a screenshot of a Facebook post with a drawing of a red, white and blue-coloured heart. It has a caption in Czech translated by Lead Stories staff as "these are our national colors. And no, it matters." The text in the Facebook post reads:
Where are the times when memorial wreaths laid at commemorative events carried our national colours, red, blue and white? This demonstrative and subliminal subjugation of our national identity by our politicians will be their shame.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Jun 27 10:03:25 2023 UTC)
Many wreaths, most of them decorated in red, white and blue colors, were laid at the memorial site of Lezaky village, a place razed by the Nazis as revenge for the assassination of Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich, a broadcast of CT24, a state TV channel, from the site, shows. The screenshot used in the TikTok video is from the broadcast. Lezaky was a village in the eastern part of the country, that was annihilated by the Nazis in 1942. It served as a base for Czechoslovak soldiers who parachuted into the then Protectorate and participated in the assassination of Heydrich.
The head of the Czech Senate Milos Vystrcil, who was among the political and army officials, who attended the annual ceremony in Lezaky memorial site on June 25, tweeted pictures from the site. They show there is just only one wrath decorated in yellow and blue among many others. Vystrcil also said that the last surviving person from Lezaky, Marie Dolezalova, laid 11 white roses, for each of the children from Lezaky, who were gassed by the Nazis.
Russia has persecuted any display of yellow and blue and Russians themselves have feared that the colors could be seen as support for Ukrainian forces since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, Moscow Times reported here and here.
Czech antigovernment, or pro-Kremlin, demonstrators tried to remove the Ukrainian flag from the building of the Czech National Museum during the protest in Prague in March, AFP said. The flag has been there as a symbol of solidarity with Ukraine, a state that was attacked by an aggressive enemy, the head of the museum Michal Lukes told the Czech state radio. They also often attack any combination of yellow and blue, even in cases that are unrelated to Ukraine, like in the case of students dressing as Minions figures during a happening, Czech website Forum 24 reported.
