The NSS pointed out that laws should be interpreted not only with respect to the exact wording, but also with respect to their purpose. "This is especially important with restitution and rehabilitation laws through which the democratic society tries to at least partly alleviate the effects of not only property, but also other wrongs," the court writes in the new collection of its key and binding verdicts. The NSS issued the ruling in reaction to an ill-defined law under which people who stayed more than 12 months in a communist Number of Czech pensioners rises by almost quarter of million ...
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Prague library plan stucks as UOHS turns blind eye to it-press ... labour camp or a prison for political reasons were entitled to receive bonuses to their pensions. The Czech Social Security Administration (CSSZ) rejected the applications of some people who stayed less than a year in a custody prison and then less than a year in labour camps, but the total length of their involuntary stay in the camp and prison was over 12 months. The NSS said all these people are entitled to the bonuses. It is estimated that some 80,000 people were sent to labour camps in 1948-1954 in Czechoslovakia without any court decision.
The camps were established as preventative disciplinary facilities isolating "political delinquents and manifest enemies of the regime," but also prostitutes, black-marketeers and those who did not have a regular job. However, the communist regime also profited from the camp's operation. Inmates were mainly forced to work in mines, steelworks, cement works, quarries and agriculture. Most of the forced labourers were rehabilitated and received financial compensation after the fall of communism in 1989.
(Ceske Noviny)
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