CZECHIA: International Religious Freedom Roundtable in Prague: discrimination cases raised
HRWF contribution about illegal dismissals of teachers practicing yoga
By Willy Fautré, director of Human Rights Without Frontiers
HRWF (14.11.2025) – My intervention will concern the illegal dismissals of a number of teachers because they follow the teachings of some specific philosophical and spiritual groups that have been defamed by the media.
Tomorrow, our NGO is organizing an event about the damage caused in the lives of ordinary citizens by some media and some journalists who are characterized by their illiteracy in religious matters but who cover issues related to religious minorities whose philosophies and life practices can different from mainstream thinking, mindset, and behaviours.
For decades, the victims of defamation campaigns have often been Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Church of Scientology, but a new group is increasingly targeted in some countries by journalists who purposefully fail to abide by the ethical rules of their profession. Their target is schools teaching tantric yoga rooted in foreign philosophies.
In the last few years, I have investigated such cases in Argentina, Romania and France but Czechia is also concerned.
Last year, a fashion teacher in Prague was fired overnight by the board of her school after her name appeared in a TV report about a yoga school. She had enrolled in that yoga school for merely practising yoga but her name and her picture were publicly thrown to the media without her consent.
The journalist in search of sensationalism had warned the board of her school that their fashion teacher might be a danger for her students because a Czech court had sentenced the spiritual master of the yoga school to a few years in prison for sexual abuse during sessions of tantric yoga about 20 years ago. It is to be noted that he is not any more living in Czechia and the teacher had never met him.
That teacher had not been involved in any illegal activity and had not had any inappropriate behaviour with her students or in her private life. She had never talked about her practice of yoga to her students but the official reason of her illegal dismissal by the board was the preservation of the image and the reputation of the school.
Another similar case in Czechia that I investigated concerns another illegal dismissal in a similar context. In May of this year, Professor Pavel Hlavinka at the Palacký University in Olomouc was dismissed with a mere stroke of the pen after 29 years of good and loyal service. That professor of philosophy had never been subject to disciplinary measures by the university. He had even received an Award from university 9 years ago. For almost 30 years, there had never been any complaints by students or parents and he had never been taken to court but he was fired. He was a prolific writer about philosophy and published a 600-page book about tantric yoga. He was also portrayed by the media as a potential danger to his students although he never used his position to influence their worldviews.
Photo: Ministry of Culture in charge of religious affairs in Prague (Credit: Willy Fautré)
