The students of the gymnasium, its employees and passers-by remembered the two murdered people at the Students’ Square. People lit candles by the photos of Vankulic and Horváth and wrote messages in the condolence book.
Rybníček also lit the candle here. “We are part of some group of aggressive people feeling that they are the right ones to raise our children and tell them what to do and what not to do. I don’t feel good about it,” the My Trenčín website quoted the city mayor as saying.
“I came to honor the victims of the first terrorist attack in Slovakia. They died because they were different; and there is a group of people who spread hatred towards otherness,” TV Joj quotes one of the participants of the commemorative event.
The school retreated
MEP for the Republika movement Milan Mazurek sharply criticized the efforts of the gymnasium in Trenčín to organize a commemorative event on the occasion of the murder in front of the Tepláreň bar. The event was then discussed on disinformation websites, where enormous criticism was launched. Mazurek called the cancellation of the original event a “victory over rainbow fanatics”.
The Ministry of Education led by Tomáš Drucker (Voice) objected to the accusation that it allows the propagation of any ideology in schools.
“The Education Department advocates and will continue to insist that schools remain an apolitical place without any ideologies, where the values of human rights, mutual respect and tolerance, which are the basis of a democratic society, are built,” the Slovak Ministry of Education said.
“At the same time, the school has the freedom to organize education and training in accordance with its mission, if these activities are in accordance with the state and school educational program,” the department added.
On October 12, 2022, 19-year-old far-right sympathizer Juraj Krajčík shot in front of the Tepláreň bar in Bratislava. He shot twenty-three-year-old Matúš Horváth and twenty-seven-year-old Juraj Vankulič. He seriously injured one woman. The perpetrator then committed suicide.
