“We Don’t Want Slovakia to Drift Toward the East” – Interview with Ján Gálik

Pavla Holcová (Investigace.cz)
Photo: Eva Kubániová 2025-02-21

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Friday, February 21, marks seven years since the murder of journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kušnírová. Their murder shook Slovak society and sparked mass protests. After information about corruption and bribery became public, then-Prime Minister Robert Fico was forced to resign. Seven years later, Fico is back in power — and the people are back in town squares. Pavla Holcová of investigace.cz spoke to Ján Gálik, a prominent face of the For a Decent Slovakia movement and a co-organizer of both the 2018 protests and this year’s demonstrations. This interview, republished in written form here in English, has been lightly edited for clarity. 

Friday, February 21 will be seven years since the murder of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová. How did you learn they were murdered?

I don’t quite remember exactly where I was and what I was doing. I do know that it was sometime in the early evening or after lunch when the news came that they had found a murdered journalist and I know that immediately my friends and I got together and said that this is really strange, suspicious, that this is not a completely normal thing, that we should at least go and light a candle. And that’s what we did. Several people came. We learned that other Slovak cities had a similar idea, but we didn’t know what would follow.

So, from the very beginning you thought that there was something suspicious about the murder of the journalist and his fiancée, Martina Kušnírová?

Finding a murdered journalist is not common in our country. And of course we didn’t know right away what would follow and what would be done, but on that first day we wanted to at least express our condolences by lighting that candle. The events that followed made us think that this is probably something bigger, something that needs to continue to be addressed.

What was the moment when you said, we need to organize, we need people to take to the streets and make it known that this is over the line?

Press conferences started to be held. I remember we even called it the “press conference period” because it was happening all the time, every day.

Who was holding them?

The prime minister, the president of the police, the interior minister — basically all the top officials of the government at the time. And of course there were also articles about who Ján Kuciak was, what he wrote about, and you may remember that there were various theories circulating at the time about who might have been interested in… silencing him. There were about 12 theories. Actually, we started protesting the very next week. There was no “For a Decent Slovakia” then, we were all doing it in our own way, in our own towns, with our own name, our own organizers. But then it came out that there had been people at the crime scene who had no business being there. It came out that Ján Kuciak had asked for police protection, which he did not get. And that he got just ridicule from the then-interior minister, Robert Kaliňák. And there were more and more such indications that something was not right. There were theories that it was some random drug dealer who accidentally shot him. And all of this struck us as very strange communication from top officials in the government at the time.

So about a week after the public heard about the murder, you and some of your circle of colleagues and friends called the first protest in Košice. How did this work?

I remember that at the time we said that we didn’t want to go back to the 90s, or something along those lines. We talked about it so much at the time that we thought, for God’s sake, there is no place for such things in the 21st century…

What were you referring to in the 90s?

Well in the 90s and early 2000s it was common, unfortunately, for people’s cars to be blown up, for journalists to be intimidated. Some journalists even disappeared. And we simply felt that we had left such things in the past. Suddenly, the way people remembered Mečiar [Slovakia’s former prime minister] and the 1990s looked very much like what was happening now. So those first two protests were not all over Slovakia, that happened two or three weeks after the murder. And in our country, the theme of those first protests was just a reference to the 90s. That we don’t want them back.

And how do you actually organize a protest like that?

Actually, very simply. You don’t need money from abroad, or, I don’t know, the Georgian Legion, or the Ukrainian secret services. If one wants to organize any kind of rally, protest, that is our right. All we have to do is to notify the city —in our case the Košice city hall — and get some sort of technology so that we can be heard. Which wasn’t very difficult for us because we had access to the equipment of various cultural institutions. I remember that the first protest cost us maybe 40 euros to pay for the electricity to connect all the equipment. But everything else we set up surprisingly fast. And I remember that we talked about it in a way that it wasn’t really us that got those people to go to the streets. And that needs to be recalled even today: that it was the social situation and the need to go and stand up for something, to express dissent, that sent those people to the streets. And we, as organizers, actually just plugged in the loudspeakers and handed in the paper to the city hall to make it all peaceful.

How many people came to those first protests?

A lot more came than we expected. If I’m not mistaken, it could have been 2-3 thousand people. We had loudspeakers and equipment for a maximum of 2,000 people. So we had to ask people to be quiet so that those in the back could hear. And people were quiet, they were very considerate, they understood that it was arranged very hastily, that we didn’t know what to expect. And then the crowds just grew and grew.

The protests started to happen on a weekly basis, every Friday. What did you demand?

Over time, as we got better organized and networked with other cities, with Bratislava, with Banská Bystrica, with Prešov and others, more and more of those places gradually started to get involved. Some of them did it like we did, from the day we heard the news. And we started talking about the fact that we should probably have some common procedure, some common rules, some common requirements. We came up with the name For a Decent Slovakia, which then caught on and which everybody knows today. And as the For a Decent Slovakia movement, we set a simple rule: no politicians are allowed to speak at our rallies. We followed that. And we had two demands. The first was a fair investigation into the murder of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová. And the second demand was a new trustworthy government.

How long did it take for these demands to be met?

The murder investigation is a very specific demand. And I think it could have taken half a year for the case to move forward, or maybe even less than half a year, before there were some first suspects, before that requirement started to be fulfilled in some way. And now the question is on what conditions that requirement is met. When a murderer is convicted? When there’s a convicted chauffeur, when there’s a convicted middleman? When the person who ordered the murder is convicted? Seven years after the murder, that person is still not convicted. So you can’t say the requirement is 100% met, but the party who ordered it is a defendant (and is currently in prison) for something else. That requirement has been deemed somehow fulfilled here, as Marian Kocner awaits his next trial. [Marian Kočner was cleared of ordering the murders in the Kuciak case.]

And the other requirement? For a trustworthy government?

That is very difficult to fulfil. We have talked a great deal about what it actually means to fulfil such a requirement. And we came to the conclusion that a trustworthy government is one to which the citizens gave their trust by way of elections. So, the day before the 2020 general election, we said that that requirement would be fulfilled tomorrow, that is, by that election. And thus, our role and our demands are fulfilled. And that’s when we stopped being active as For a Decent Slovakia. Stopped organizing protests. And we only functioned in organizing memorial rallies for Ján and Martina.

So how many people went to those protests?

The maximum was around 150,000 people in Slovakia and abroad. I think that was sometime in mid-March. A month after the murder.

How did you feel about that? The fact that you were on the stage. That you had to speak to the crowd. That you had to organize people. The politicians stepping down or somehow meeting the demands of the movement. Was it satisfaction that something was happening?

I don’t know. It was a very strange mix of different feelings. Of course, it makes you happy when you have a large number of people who all come and behave in a very polite, sophisticated way, who are tuned in to the same frequency, and you feel some hope, some positive things. But at the same time, there is always the feeling that the people who govern us probably made it possible for a young journalist and his fiancée to be murdered. It was such an unpleasant mix of those feelings. And I think what I remember most is this strange adrenaline rush of getting up early and going to sleep late at night. All the thinking, discussing, calling each other, watching every press conference, every statement, wondering how to respond, how to prepare some strategy, some plan. And that it was really exhausting and that it dominated every second of our existence for months to come.

Let’s jump to 2025. People are in the streets and protests are being organized again. Slovakia is once again led by Prime Minister Robert Fico. What is the motive behind these new protests? And what is the main difference between the protests that followed the murder of Ján and Martina and those that are being called today?

There are many, many reasons. A few years ago, we would never have dreamed that Robert Fico would return to power with the strength he did. The years that preceded it were marked by the coronavirus pandemic, the war in Ukraine and, first and foremost, the very incompetent government of Igor Matovič, the terrible communication of Igor Matovič and his colleagues and the terrible chaos they brought to the country. And it became more and more clear that people were very dissatisfied and that the positive change that they expected after the fall of the government of Robert Fico, or of Petr Pellegrini afterwards, simply did not come. There was a great sense of disappointment that when the government changed, the positive effects were not felt.

But, after all, an awful lot has happened in Slovakia. Three successive police chiefs have been accused of corruption. One committed suicide. Twenty judges, prosecutors, prominent lawyers and heads of various police units, all under investigation. Some have begun to cooperate with the police. A lot of things happened. Why wasn’t that enough for people? Or why were they impatient?

That’s a good question. I, of course, see it as very positive that the police were independent. They had their hands free. They were free to investigate things. So there were some really big positive developments. There’s no question about that. But somehow the fact that they have to be tested for coronavirus, they have to wear a mask, interferes more in the life of the ordinary person. That’s their reality, and issues of justice and organized crime are often very abstract and remote. In everyday life, unfortunately, people felt problems, fear and concern about the future. And I think that the opposition at that time, led by Robert Fico, exploited this, took advantage of it. And that they managed to actually scare people, to anger people, thanks to the pandemic. It was Robert Fico who organized the protests at the time when there was a ban on assembly.

Just for the sake of comparison. How many people came to the protests organized by Robert Fico?

I confess that I have been to several of his protests. And certainly fewer people than came to ours. Slovakia has also experienced some very unpleasant protests, such as when Robert Fico and Smer joined together with the fascist party Republika and made a relatively large protest [over the pandemic] in Košice, where they brought people from all over eastern and central Slovakia in buses, cooked goulash, gave out free beer, and then the whole crowd came to the main street, where the protest was really very unpleasant. Things were said there that simply do not belong in polite society.

And this is the protest where they insulted the president?

Not just this one, they insulted the president at every protest. At every single protest, they said terrible things, vulgar things.

So the current protests versus the original protests. Who’s organizing them now? What is the new demand, seven years after the murder?

It has to be said that the protests started right after this government, the fourth government of Robert Fico, came in. And they were started this time by the opposition parties, which had been calling for quite successful protests for a couple of weeks, when they tried to prevent the amendment of the Criminal Code and the abolition of the Office of the Special Prosecutor.

Do I understand correctly that the amendment of the Criminal Code and the abolition of the Special Prosecutor’s Office was to help people who were loyal to Robert Fico not to go to prison?

I’m sure it was. Certainly, the abolition and intimidation of people from the judiciary was aimed at helping people who are close to Robert Fico avoid accountability and investigation. Some investigations were stopped, some people acquitted of charges, so the opposition seized on the issue and called protests. Those protests were relatively successful, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Criminal Code was changed and the Special Prosecutor’s office was abolished. Well, after the opposition protests ended, the civil protests continued. 

And now the reason, a very strong one, was Robert Fico’s trip to Moscow. The collective “Peace to Ukraine” decided to respond to that. They called the first protest before Christmas, and they wanted to express that Robert Fico does not represent the opinion of Slovak society and that we are on the side of the innocent victim, Ukraine, our neighbour, and not on the side of Russia. And at that time, I think more people came to that protest than anyone expected, and after the holidays, more people joined, more towns and finally we came back with For Decent Slovakia. And that’s how this wave of protests started, and it’s still going on today.

What kind of organization is Peace to Ukraine?

Peace to Ukraine is a civic association, or a collective, of people who have organized various events in Bratislava in support of Ukraine in its war against Russia.

And are they Ukrainians or Slovaks?

It’s Slovaks. I think I know most of the collective, and it’s all Slovak men and Slovak women who have organized various support rallies and various protests. They also carried out many collections to help Ukraine. It’s an organization that wants to show that, in Slovakia, we stand with Ukraine, and that Robert Fico and other politicians really don’t represent what the majority of Slovakia thinks.

So what are the demands at the moment? What about the people in the streets at the protests, what are people demanding?

Another difference between these protests and the ones we did in 2018 is that we’re not acting under some common umbrella platform. It’s much more decentralized and each city that’s involved has a free hand. We’ve been talking and presenting some demands in the town squares, but it’s different than it was in 2018 when there was a unified platform and those demands were valid in every city. In general, demands today are directed towards the foreign policy orientation of Slovakia: that we want to be anchored in the European Union and in the West. And in NATO, of course. And somehow these demands have not been met and that is why the demand for Robert Fico’s resignation was added. I think this is the same for all cities, but because we are not completely centralized, the message may not be the same in every city. For us, another demand is to replace the Minister for Culture, because she is destroying culture.

Could you be a little more specific about what steps she is taking to destroy culture?

Well, we are in a situation where the Slovak National Party (SNS), headed by Andrej Danko, is very weak, and that is why it has taken on various people, various big names from the disinformation and conspiracy scene, to add to the candidate list for the elections. Basically, they are celebrities, conspiro-celebrities. And one of those people is Martina Šimkovičová, who is a former TV presenter who subsequently became a star of the conspiracy scene through some YouTube channel of hers where she spread the craziest conspiracy theories.

Can you give me an example? An example of what she’s spreading? 

General misinformation about coronavirus, vaccinations and various measures that the government was trying to do at the time — in a very chaotic way, I admit, so that’s when all these conspiracy sites sprouted up and gained popularity. And so did Slovan TV, which was hosted by Martina Šimkovičová with her colleague Petr Kotlár, who is currently the government’s commisioner for the investigation of the pandemic. Thanks to him, we are the only ones in the world who have not signed the World Health Organization’s joint declaration [on amendments to international health regulations]. He is a man who does not believe in the coronavirus, who is truly a huge conspiracist, and he is in charge of investigating pandemics. Mrs. Šimkovičová has become Minister for Culture, Mr. Taraba has become Minister for the Environment, and these are all people who have been recruited by the Slovak National Party (SNS) to be on their ticket so that the party had a chance of getting into Parliament at all. They are not members of the SNS and Andrej Danko, as party leader, does not have much control over them. But they are in the government. And they hold really important positions, and every single one of them is doing a lot of damage in those positions. Whether to the environment or to culture. These are people who are very vindictive and very much against the way that culture or national parks have been managed up to now. This means that all the directors of the national parks have been replaced and all the experts have been fired. And today there are people in important positions everywhere who are primarily loyal to them and who are doing terrible damage through their incompetence but also through their vindictiveness.

Does that mean that the protests now, as opposed to in the past, have some political ambitions? Because they are aiming at changes in the government.

We debate a lot about whether or not we are apolitical. Actually, we are involved in politics and we address these protests to politicians, but we are non-partisan. That means that we don’t cooperate with any party to organize, but we are definitely political because we definitely want to change the conditions in politics. And most importantly, we want to support civil society in some way, [and feel] people should be more active, that they should take an interest, that they should actively promote their opinion in some way. For me, these protests are very important for us as a society to learn to be more active in public affairs. And if enough people demand change, that change will come. This Friday, 21 February, will actually intersect somehow, at least symbolically, the protests that were going on from 2018 to 2020 and the protests that accelerated this year after Christmas.

Are you going to try to somehow keep the commemoration of the anniversary of the murder of Ján and Martina and actually the much more radical political protest separate, or do you think that, on the contrary, they are related and should be communicated together in one place?

Certainly these things are related. We are talking about what the legacy of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová means for Slovak society and for us. What is happening at the moment is related to that legacy. We see that politicians, more than ever before, are threatening journalists, ridiculing journalists, refusing to communicate with the relevant media and so on. At the same time, it is important for us that this Friday is not just a protest, as it was two weeks ago, or as it will be again in March, but that we dedicate part of this gathering to remembrance. This means that half of the protest will be more sad and peaceful, more commemorative, but the other half will be a protest again. I think that these themes are very closely related and, unfortunately, the situation in Slovakia is even worse now than it was in 2018. And when we talked then about political culture or about some kind of media freedom, about attacks on civil society and professional institutions — today it is all three times worse and we have to be all the more vocal. So yes, on Friday there will be rallies in over 60 cities, both abroad and in over 45 cities in Slovakia. In 2018 we always called it a rally. We avoided the word protest. Today it’s different. Today we are really talking about protests.

What motivates you to do these protests? Because when I think of myself, I can imagine having a huge motivation, a huge drive in 2018, but if I woke up one morning in 2025, I’d probably be like, no, for God’s sake, not again. Or I’d be burnt out, or I’d be depressed, frustrated. What are your feelings about the fact that we’re not even at ground zero — we’ve slipped further back?

Well, I probably shouldn’t admit to this, but you put it well. Yes, it’s depressing, it’s frustrating, I’m burnt out. This is not something I want to do, that makes me happy. I’m not looking forward to going back to organizing protests, not at all. But by having done it in the past, I also feel some obligation and some responsibility in the eyes of the people who went to those squares to have that opportunity today. 

First of all, the motivation is that I love Slovakia very much. It’s my home, it’s where I was born, it’s where I grew up, it’s the country that my parents built, my grandparents built. I have a relationship with its nature, I have a relationship with its culture, and when I see the way people are appropriating it — who don’t respect its traditions, who don’t understand the culture, who are devastating the nature and who are attacking the very people who are building and protecting and somehow improving the country — then I am motivated to say something about it and to help, so that as a society, as citizens, we can show that we disagree. It drives me crazy that so many of these politicians have such weak character and absent moral compasses and don’t take the power that they have been given as a responsibility, as a service to the country. Instead, they understand it as though they have become the owners of the country and they can do with it what suits them, what benefits them. And that makes me very, very angry, and that motivates me to stop them from doing that, to remind them that they don’t own the land, that they have been given the people’s trust and they are paid by all of us and they should have our interests at heart first and foremost, and not their selfishness or their business. I guess that’s kind of my motivation. 

And maybe I should also say that it’s not exactly easy, compared to 2018, those full streets don’t fill me with as much hope as they did before. I’m trying to work on that somehow internally, but also to expand the collective, the people who organize these things, so that maybe we can bring that hope and vision for a better country to the streets. The difference between 2018 and 2025 is that we saw the light at the end of the tunnel then. I think all of us who stood in those streets knew that if we hung in there, some change would come.

Can you imagine calling protests or rallies in 2032?

Well, I can imagine it, but I hope not. And not only because I would like to do something else, because it really keeps you very busy, especially mentally, and it’s hard to concentrate on other things afterwards. But because I don’t think it’s right for one person to organize protests for a long time either. That’s why I’m trying to shift and expand the organization around me, because I realize that what I think may not be the right thing at all. So I’m hoping that if there are protests in seven years, that someone else will be doing them. But I’m definitely going to be there.

Pavla Holcova

A Czech journalist, Pavla Holcová is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Czech Center for Investigative Journalism. She is an editor at OCCRP and a member of ICIJ. She was a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University (2023). Pavla is the winner of the ICFJ Knight International Journalism Award and, with her colleagues Arpád Soltész and Eva Kubániová, the World Justice Project’s Anthony Lewis Prize Award. She is based in Prague.