This is a cross-post by Edmund Standing
The Czech Republic is fast becoming a hot bed of neo-Nazism and racist sentiment. The Times reported in November on the terrible treatment being received by Roma families:
The squalid hostels embody the institutionalised racism against the Roma and their powerlessness. The 200,000 to 300,000 Roma in the Czech Republic have a higher infant mortality rate, are more likely to be unemployed, live in extreme poverty and have a shorter life expectancy. Racist violence is on the increase. Last November hundreds of activists from the extreme-right Workers Party attacked Romas in Litvínov with stones and petrol bombs.
Racism is openly expressed, even among the educated. In May, the Czech National Party called for a “final solution” to the Gypsy issue in a television campaign for the European Union elections. The previous month a two-year-old, Natalka Sivakova, suffered 80 per cent burns after an arson attack on the family home in Vitkov, near the Polish border.
In October, Radio Prague reported on the arrest of a number of neo-Nazis, including a Workers’ Party politician and activists from the ‘white power’ music scene. The report highlighted the case of Natalka Sivakova:
Arguably, the most significant bust came by police back in August. After months of investigation and slow-going, officers arrested 12 (and later charged four suspects) for a brutal firebomb attack against a Romany family. That attack which took place in the east of the country, left three people injured: parents and their two-year-old daughter. In the incident, the toddler only narrowly escaped death and remains in treatment after having suffered burns to 80 percent of her body.
That same month, B92 reported on the arrest of a Serbian Blood & Honour leader:
PRAGUE – The head of the Serbian branch of the international neo-Nazi organization Blood & Honour, Dragan Petrović, has been arrested in Prague.
Special anti-organized crime police units arrested about ten neo-Nazi activists in simultaneous raids, one of whom was Petrović. Petrović from Jagodina is the head of Blood & Honour in Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The 35-year-old, who is listed on the Blood & Honour site as a member of the Serbian neo-Nazi group Nacionalni Stroj, is married to a Czech woman and has lived there for several years.
He organized a neo-Nazi protest in the Czech Republic several days ago in protest at the arrest of Blood & Honour members in Holland. He is a regular fixture at neo-Nazi-related concerts and gatherings in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Petrović’s lawyer Kolja Kubiček claims that at least 28 people were arrested in connection with a recent concert, which came in for public condemnation due to the open promotion of racist and neo-Nazi ideology at the event.
Now the depth of neo-Nazi hatred in the Czech Republic has been revealed, with the following messages coming from supporters of the ‘Autonomous Nationalists’ and the Workers’ Party:
Little Natálka has received many Christmas gifts from various people and has thus become a thorn in the side of Jan Fuksa, a Workers’ Party member and candidate. Fuksa has openly threatened anyone and everyone who has sent the child presents, writing: ”Those who send even the smallest gift to a colored girl do not deserve to live in a white society. One day we will select them for removal.”
Tomáš Skyba, a member of the Autonomous Nationalists in Zlín region, wrote in: “I’d put a can of Zyklon under her [Natalka’s] Christmas tree.” (Editor’s Note: The Nazis murdered the prisoners interned in their concentration camps with Zyklon B gas in the gas chambers). Neo-Nazi Jan Bareš wrote: “I’d give her a nice little bottle of gasoline and matches, since it’s Christmas!”
Prvnízprávy.cz reports that the worst contributions have been made by 21-year-old neo-Nazi Martin Grund of Teplice, who writes on Facebook under the nickname Obergruppenfuhrer Böhse Onkel and called Natálka a “gypsy beaver”, writing: “I would send her a beautiful package of anthrax so she can breathe better.”