Chair of DSSS cell in Litvínov sentenced for promoting suppression of human rights and freedoms
Petr Križanovič, chair of the Litvínov cell of the Workers’ Social Justice Party (Dělnická strana sociální spravedlnosti – DSSS) has recently been sentenced to six months in prison, suspended for one year, for committing the crime of supporting a movement aimed at suppressing human rights and freedoms. His case was related to the cause of the Romani police assistants in Litvínov that has been reported on by news server Romea.cz
Several Romani police assistants stopped Křižanovič on the streets of the Janov housing estate because he was wearing a baseball cap with the Workers’ Party (Dělnická strana – DS) logo on it. The assistants asked him to remove his cap because, on the one hand, support for the dissolved party is illegal, and on the other hand he was exposing himself to the risk of attack by wearing it. When he refused to remove the cap, one of the police assistants removed it for him. After Křižanovič complained, then-Mayor of Litvínov Daniel Volák wrote on the town’s website that the Romani police assistants had committed a felony, that he would not be extending their contract, and that he would completely abolish the program of which they were a part.
Litvínov filed criminal charges against the three police assistants, one of whom is Miroslav Kováč. However, police decided to handle the entire matter as a misdemeanor. Kováč was not intimidated and filed criminal charges against Křižanovič. The court subsequently upheld his claim that Křižanovič was breaking the law by wearing the cap with the DS logo, as the promotion of the court-dissolved party is also the promotion of neo-Nazism.
The Supreme Administrative Court dissolved the DS because it found chauvinistic and xenophobic elements in its actions, ideology, program and symbols, as well as a racist subtext and a connection to Hitler’s national socialism. The court said the DS had incited violence and was striving for a radical transformation of the democratic order by artificially creating the feeling that immigrants, for example, pose a threat.
“I am not pleased by the fact that in our society, people like Mr Křižanovič work to overthrow democratic principles and to usurp for themselves alone the right to our shared home country and native land, or that they seek ways to start conflicts and put at risk the lives of children, the elderly, men and women. I filed the criminal charges because Křižanovič was unable to grasp that he was putting himself in certain danger, nor did he grasp the fact that he was putting at risk the entire locality, which is predominantly occupied by Romani people. I am glad the court has recognized, through this verdict, that violence will not lead to democracy and equality for all citizens. Today’s generation should abandon the prejudices of past eras and look forward toward integrity, to improving the quality of all of our lives, because only together can we create something of value for our descendants,” Miroslav Kováč told news server Romea.cz.
The approach taken by those in charge of the town hall leadership at the time of this incident is testified to by the actions of today’s commander of the Litvínov Municipal Police Martin Klika, who was Vice-Mayor at the time and actively involved in the crusade against the Romani police assistants. As one of the DSSS web pages reports, Klika was a guest at a meeting of the local DSSS organization in Litvínov this past February. “The debate with him was focused on security in Litvínov, primarily at Janov. Members of the local DSSS cell informed him of their plan to deploy the party’s monitoring patrols to supervise order in troubled localities in town,” the right-wing extremists report on their website.
Daniel Volák, the former Mayor of Litvínov who is today First Deputy Justice Minister, did not respond to the many requests we made to his office for an interview. Petr Križanovič reportedly will be appealing his sentence, so the entire matter might come to trial once more.
