The demonstration was organized by the far-right party Freedom and Direct Democracy, whose leader Tomio Okamura called the planned meeting of Sudeten Germans at the end of May a "shameful disgrace." The protesters' placards featured slogans such as "The Meeting of Sudeten Germans is a disgrace for Brno" and "Down with creeping Germanization!" This year, the traditional meeting of Sudeten Germans on Pentecost is set to take place in the Czech Republic for the first time — from May 22 to 25. The organizers of the "Meeting Brno" festival invited the associations of expelled Germans, who also hold an annual reconciliation march in memory of approximately 20,000 ethnic Germans expelled from the second largest city in the Czech Republic after World War II. In total, after World War II, around three million Germans were expelled from what was then Czechoslovakia in response to Nazi crimes, most of whom resettled in Germany, and since 1954, Bavaria has taken on the patronage of the Sudeten Germans. Relations between Sudeten Germans and Czechs have remained tense for decades. The Czech government has so far refrained from making official statements regarding the planned meeting, while Prime Minister Andrej Babiš noted that it is purely a civil initiative. Meanwhile, former Czech presidents Václav Klaus and Miloš Zeman sharply criticized the idea. Klaus called the concept of reconciliation misguided, while Zeman stated that the event paves the way for a revision of the outcomes of World War II.