The Minute of Silence initiative has proposed the date of March 22nd as Pandemic Victims’ Day. The date was chosen to commemorate the first death from COVID-19 in the Czech Republic. Photo Credit: MK / BD.
Czech Rep., Apr 13 (BD) – The Minute of Silence initiative has proposed the date of March 22nd as Pandemic Victims’ Day. Activists from the initiative delivered a proposal to the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Radek Vondráček (ANO), and the Speaker of the Senate, Miloš Vystrčil (ODS), to add this date to the list of public holidays in the Czech Republic. The date was chosen to commemorate the first death from COVID-19 in the Czech Republic.
The Minute of Silence group organized a nationwide commemoration of COVID-19 victims on March 22nd, painting thousands of crosses on the cobblestones of important squares in Prague, Brno, and other cities around the country, and church bells rang for one minute at 12pm that day. With the same purpose in mind, the group said that “Ordinary people with their daily worries are hit by the severe consequences of a pandemic. They need to hear something other than the day-to-day political traffic.”
Petr Pospíchal, a representative from the group, added: “I think that the data on the number of deaths in connection with the pandemic has great weight and perhaps the elected representatives of the citizens can see it.” Pospíchal emphasised that a day of remembrance is not a day of rest, and said he hoped this day would include all the victims of the pandemic and that the unfortunate situation would soon be over. According to the most recent data, 27,329 people have died from COVID-19 in the Czech Republic.
