Red Star also ‘symbol of freedom,’ Czech police argue

Police in Semily say they will not act on a criminal complaint filed in December by a local architect to remove a massive mosaic facing the Czech town’s main square that features a hammer & sickle and five-pointed red star — communist symbols some find as offensive as the Nazi swastika, and which politicians have tried to ban at the EU level. The architect objects to the mayor’s pragmatic solution on aesthetic grounds and finds the police’s reasoning “perverse.”