Czech Police investigating video of father encouraging his daughter to imagine she is beating "Gypsies"

News server Aktuálně.cz has spoken with the man who made a video of himself encouraging his daughter to beat a pillow with a baseball bat while imagining she is beatng a "Gypsy" or a Muslim, an action he has told them he does not regret. After news server Romea.cz broke the news of the video going viral on Facebook, police have begun their investigation of the case.

According to police officer Jan Daněk, one of the versions officers are working with is that the video is staged and was not actually intended to be a seriously-meant communication. "We are working with all versions. We learned of this from public sources and handed the video over to our colleagues at the local department who deal with such cases," he told Aktuálně.cz.

"Just because somebody uploads a video to online social networks does not mean that a crime has been committed. This could have been staged, it could be an excerpt from a film," the spokesperson said.

Aktuálně.cz, however, has spoken with a man who allegedly filmed the video. He does not regret his behavior and says the recording was created as a reaction to the family visiting Prague, where allegedly Romani people shouted at them in the metro.

The man asserts that the video does not show him encouraging the girl to do anything and that he was just asking her questions. "I asked her what she was doing. Nobody was asking her to imagine anything. She was afraid because of the way they blasted at us," Aktuálně.cz quoted him as saying.

The father said his daughter knows that human beings are not supposed to hurt each other. "She can beat a pillow on a bed. It's like a punching bag. You know you can punch one at the gym, but you don't do that outside," the man said in his defense.

According to the Prima television station, the man who made the video is a Lukáš K. from the town of Benešov who runs an e-shop that sells marijuana-growing equipment and proclaims himself to be part of the hard core "ultra" fans of the Sparta football team. Prima also reported that he has had conflicts with the law before over drugs.

News server Blesk.cz has reported that they showed the video to Czech Labor and Social Affairs Minister Michaela Marksová. She does not want to let the matter rest.

"Certainly it is appropriate, at the very least, to contact child welfare authorities," the minister said. She also claimed to have only ever seen such videos from some Arab countries where young children are allegedly encouraged to play at killing Jewish people.

"I am shocked that something like this has appeared in our country as well," she told Blesk.cz. News server Romea.cz was the first to report on the video after it was published to the Facebook profile of a user nicknamed Olloph Samorost.