Covenants and resolutions.
We are one of five countries that voted against the Global Compact on Migration. A few days ago, however, we supported the Global Compact for Refugees. The seemingly illogical contradiction has a pretty good justification. First of all, it should be stressed that these are non-legally binding documents that are more or less proclamatory in nature. While the pact on migrants is perceived by us as a dangerous doctrine aimed at legalising migration and opening the floodgates leading to the mass transfer of citizens of other countries to the Czech Republic, the resolution of the UN High Representative is 'tolerated' by us, presumably because of the morally unquestionable rights of fleeing people fearing for their lives. A permanently confused public confuses the terms and does not perceive that refugee status with its full definition, rights and obligations is something that has existed since 1951 and has been logically and correctly respected all along. The imprecise use of the terms asylum seeker or refugee further complicates the public debate on this issue. Minister Petříček has asserted himself by supporting the refugee resolution against the obvious opposition of the Prime Minister, and he might have been given a key fob for showing courage if it had not been essentially a media-savvy evasive manoeuvre that obscures what is important. Thus, the public space in which most attention should be paid to the crucial law under discussion, the 2019 state budget, as well as to the Czech Republic's declining reputation due to its inability to address the prime minister's obvious conflicts of interest and his enormous and counterproductive burden of personal problems, is full of ballast. We can only speculate which news servers are jumping on this line and why. And we have almost forgotten about the possible crime of bringing a person into the territory of a foreign state or the suspicion of subsidy fraud in the case of the Boar's Nest. In the light of the migrant/refugee issue, the all-important Brexit with its risk of unleashing an economic crisis, Crimea, Syria or Russian and Chinese interference in anything that can be influenced pales into insignificance. Let's see how our privately owned media will handle the hypothetical detention of a Czech citizen on Chinese territory in connection with the ban on the use of Huawei phones in a number of Czech government offices. My guess is that it won't be a big deal for pragmatic reasons.