Czech Police assess physical, racist, vulgar assault on Romani children and adults traveling by train as a mere misdemeanor
"Fucking gyppos! Black fucks, swine!" were just some of the racist vulgarities which a Romani children's dance ensemble had to hear on the evening of 19 August when, after performing at a festival in Lovosice, they were returning by train to Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic. The verbal and then physical assault happened when the group of Roma were attacked by a passenger who was apparently under the influence of alchohol.
Police have investigated the incident and assessed it as a misdemeanor. “We traveled to Lovosice for the dance festival. Our last performance was at 7 PM and our train left an hour and a half after that. Because it was a two-story train, the children wanted to sit up top,” the director of the ensemble, who is also an assistant educator, told news server Romea.cz (we know her identity, but we are not publishing it at her express request).
Upon arriving on the upper floor of the train car, they noticed they were sharing it with an older gentleman, two young men speaking English, and a young woman. The unsuspecting children, their director and her husband, who was accompanying them to and from the performance, took their seats and immediately began hearing racist abuse about their ethnicity.
Racist abuse without end
“You fucking gypsies, you don’t know how to behave!” shouted the young woman, who was probably about 26 years old and appeared to be under the influence of alcohol and drugs. She then began to accuse somebody in the group of 12 children ranging in age from between nine and 17 of having given her a slap.
The children and their director say that was a lie. “My husband and I were doing our best to immediately calm the frightened children. We told them not to react to the lady under any circumstances, but she had no intention of letting up on her attack. She was using expressions like ‘Black fucks, swine! Gypsies and degeš‘ on us. I turned around and told her not to use words when she doesn’t understand what they mean. She stood up and moved toward me, but my husband stood in her way, grabbing onto the backs of the seats facing each other across the aisle, and using his own body to make sure she wouldn’t get to me and the children,” the director described what happened.
My husband and I were doing our best to immediately calm the frightened children. We told them not to react to the lady under any circumstances, but she had no intention of letting up on her attack. She was using expressions like 'Black fucks, swine! Gypsies and degeš' on us.
Some of their fellow passengers exited the car in the meantime, so nobody but the couple was able to stand up for the small group of children. The 11 girls and one boy began to cry and panic, as they were afraid the woman would assault them physically.
The director’s husband, who was considerably supporting the group at that moment, shouted at the woman that she should go back to her seat and leave them alone. The director joined him and warned the woman that there were young children with them and that she should watch her language and behave more respectably.
The woman reacted with irritation and told the small group that she didn’t care about any of that because “gypsies are black all the same”. She then started pointing her finger at the children.
The group decided to move into another car at the next stop, but the conductor entered the car. The director did her best to resolve the situation with the Czech Railways staffer and asked her whether she could instruct the woman to leave them alone.
The conductor refused to come to her aid, saying the women should resolve the matter between themselves, and left. Nobody else stood up for the children.
“I comprehended that we would not be finding any backup from anybody on that train, although it would have been enough for the conductor to say she would call the police. We got ready to disembark. My husband left the car last, he feared the woman would attack the children and harm them. As we were moving into the aisle so we could leave, the woman actually did assault us. She pushed my husband from behind. He pushed her back and warned her to leave us alone. As he was walking downstairs, the woman shoved him again, harder this time,” the director describes the unpleasant experience.
The director told the woman who had been so sick of the small group of Roma from the start that she would be immediately calling the police. The officers told her to wait for them at the main railway station in Ústí nad Labem.
The woman exited at that same station and moved toward the small group of Roma the moment she saw them on the escalators. The last in line was a daughter of the director, and fortunately another passenger entered the escalator behind her, unsuspectingly preventing the aggressive woman from direct contact with the group.
Even that did not dissuade the woman from more distasteful assaults on the Romani children. “She just had to spit at us,” the director sighed.
Policie intervene at the railway station
Fortunately, the police arrived and the director immediately informed them about the entire situation and pointed out the passenger who was continuing to persecute them. The woman even began to insult the Romani group in front of the officers themselves.
The officers warned the woman not to speak that way about the group and to stop insulting them. When they asked for her identification, the woman claimed to not have any on her because she was commuting home from work.
“If we [Roma] had assaulted somebody and not had our identification documents on us, we would have been immediately taken to the station, but unfortunately it didn’t work that way here,” the director said. “They promised us to hold the woman for a bit because we wanted to make it to the closest bus stop and go home. However, they released her soon afterward and she set out in the same direction as us. A police officer himself had said he could see the children were shaken by the experience. Fortunately, she didn’t lower herself to any more verbal or physical attacks,” she said, adding that she filed a crime report against the young woman on Monday.
According to the director of the dance ensemble, an officer at the station heard her complaint and asked her to come back in an hour. She did so.
“They gave me the papers at the reception desk. There was not a word there about the woman physically attacking my husband first. The document also said I was not asking to be informed of how the matter proceeds. However, I wanted to know how it would proceed. Nobody ever asked me about that,” the director reveals.
Václav Krieger, police press spokesperson, confirmed to news server Romea.cz that the incident transpired. We received the report from a caller to line 158 on 19 August in the evening and a police patrol arrived at the main railway station in Ústí nad Labem. The person who reported the incident was properly instructed by the patrol on how to proceed and two days later, 21 August, she personally visited the relevant local district police department. We documented the incident as a misdemeanor against civil coexistence and sent it to the administrative body for handling. The woman received a confirmation of the report she filed,” Krieger told Romea.cz.
“Anybody who disagrees with the police procedure in this matter can contact the District Prosecutor directly, which can review the entire matter that was reported. In this case, that is the District Prosecutor in Ústí nad Labem,” the police spokesperson answered when asked whether the acceptance of the criminal complaint as described by the dance ensemble director had been correctly performed. That person has doubts about the police procedure and has decided to turn to the In IUSTITIA organization team, which deals with bias crime in all its breadth.
