DEFEND

Since last week, police have arrested five pro-Palestine activists in Czechia, one person in Slovakia, one person in Bulgaria and three in Poland. Without sufficient evidence, the Czech state has charged these individuals with terrorism in connection with a fire on 20 March 2026 at a facility owned by Czech arms manufacturer LPP Holding and Elbit Systems in Pardubice, Czechia. Five individuals are currently imprisoned in Czech prisons, awaiting trial under harsh conditions and without any indication as to when they may be released.

Additional local activists are facing house raids, detention, interrogation, and device confiscation in attempts to uncover any shred of evidence.

This is not an isolated event, and repression against those who speak out against genocide is not new. It joins the long string of arrests and remanding of those who oppose Zionism witnessed across the world.

This is a witch hunt — plain and simple.

This current wave of persecution only reflects and builds upon the Czech state's historical uncritical allegiance to Israel — an allegiance that has meant vetoing any attempt within the EU to shrink support for Israeli crimes against humanity. In keeping with the long standing worldwide practice of suppressing dissenting voices using terrorism laws, this criminalisation is an authoritarian tool used to silence those denouncing Czechia's complicity in this genocide.

We oppose the cynical and pernicious claim that destroying arms that are used by Israel against Palestine, Lebanon or Iran is terrorism. These are acts of conscience. LPP Holding is a key manufacturer of drones and other weapons technologies in Central Europe, and recently announced plans to open a production and training facility in collaboration with Elbit Systems. Elbit is Israel's largest arms producer, providing 85% of combat drones used by the Israeli military. It plays a principal role in the 75,000 deaths of Palestinians in Gaza — as the most conservative estimates suggest — since 7 October 2023 and over 720 since the declared "ceasefire" of 11 October 2025. An additional over 11,000 dead continued to be pulled out of rubble, and over 16,000 have been documented as killed through Israel's man-made starvation campaign. It is estimated that over half a million Palestinians in Gaza are in some stage of malnutrition, illness and starvation. Between 7 October 2023 and 28 March 2026, 1,073 Palestinians — at least 233 of them children — were killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

The Czech state's strategy is clear: to leverage this moment in order to harass, criminalise, and silence broad swaths of the Palestine solidarity movement. This is mirrored across Europe, the UK, the U.S. and all of the West, where we are consistently seeing Zionism driving state policy and police practice towards authoritarianism. While this current surge in authoritarianism may have started through the targeting of Palestine solidarity activists, as history shows us again and again, it will not end there.

We, the undersigned individuals and organizations, pledge our unwavering solidarity with the people of conscience in Czechia facing persecution for speaking up against the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

This moment demands swift international opposition and solidarity across borders. We join with the CzechElbit10 and our fellow people of conscience against the use of arbitrary and undemocratic accusations of "terrorism" to silence opposition to genocide and rising authoritarianism.