CZECH REPUBLIC President V clav Havel’s attempt to end the screening law barring former senior communists and secret police from political and public office has been overturned. When the Parliament voted to extend the so-called lustration law, which affects academics, principals and headteachers, to the year 2000, the president used his veto. But when the law was sent back to Parliament the deputies over-rode his wishes.
Opponents of lustration argue that the law was hastily drafted and is open to abuse. Communist deputy Jaroslav Suait said: “It’s tragi-comic that heads of school dining halls are asked for screening certificates.” About one in 25 of those screened have been judged “positive”, but most have successfully challenged the ruling in court.
GERMANY History appears to have caught up with Carl Diem, the father of German sport and co-founder of Koelner Sports-hochschule, the national sports university in Cologne.
Herr Diem, who died in 1962 and was known as Mr Olympics because of his commitment to the event, has been exposed as an active former Nazi by a television journalist. Now Cologne city council is under pressure from the Social Democrats and Greens to change the sign on the street outside the university, which was named after him.
The Sportshochschule is concerned that the reputation of its former rector is tarnished. The current rector, Joachim Mestor, said the university would only be in favour of changing the street name if “new, historically substantiated facts emerged which placed Carl Diem in a different light”.
