Slovaks Throng Capital to Join Public Protests in Eastern EU

Slovaks protested against corruption in one of the largest demonstrations in the country this decade, an echo of intensifying unrest across the European Union’s eastern wing over backsliding on rule of law.

Thousands of people gathered in the main square in the capital, Bratislava, demanding Interior Minister Robert Kalinak, top police officials and the head of the state anti-graft unit be replaced for doing too little to fight corruption. While the high-school students who organized the Tuesday’s rally have tried to distance themselves from politics, the motion calls to mind the 1989 student protests that brought down the communist rule in then Czechoslovakia.