Czech activists demand explanation for Saturday's police brutality against religious services

The “We Don’t Want Neo-Nazis in Ústí!” Initiative has published 10 fundamental criticisms of the approach taken by the repressive units of the Czech Police against a peaceful religious meeting last Saturday in Krupka. News server Romea.cz publishes that text in full below:

1. Even though there were sufficient legal reasons for them to do so, the Czech Police never dispersed the demonstration convened by the Workers’ Social Justice Party (DSSS). The shouting of hateful slogans against members of a national minority there was sufficient evidence of a display of intolerance.

2. Instead, the Czech police ensured that a brutal intervention would be carried out against a religious service in order to make way for members and sympathizers of the DSSS to march into the residential zone of the housing estate where the local Roma community lives. Once there, the DSSS continued its displays of intolerance toward and provocations of the local Roma population.

3. From the very start of the religious services, the police did their best to prevent people, whether Czech or Roma, from attending. They also did their best to systematically disturb the services as they were being held.

4. The police are currently systematically manipulating the Czech public by releasing misleading information about their own intervention. The brunt of their intervention did not target individual left-wing radicals who were nearby, it targeted the 200 people attending religious services.

5. The police commander on the scene was unable to provide a legal, professional justification for the police approach. The Czech Police have still not released any legal explanation for their intervention.

6. The police made use of this action as an extensive training exercise for their repressive units. Their supremely arrogant approach, demonstrated throughout the day, led to the violation of the fundamental human rights and freedoms of those participating in religious services and of local citizens.

7. The police, instead of taking an expert, professional approach to events, concentrated on using the method of harassing individual worshipers and infiltrating their ranks. Police misused the so-called anti-conflict team for the purpose of demagogic manipulation of churchgoers and others attending the religious service.

8. We strongly condemn these police actions, which have violated the fundamental constitutional rights of citizens of the Czech Republic.

9. We demand an explanation from the Interior Minister and all other responsible representatives of public life and the state.

10. If the police are not going to take legal, professional action against the members and sympathizers of the DSSS when they manifest ethnic, national, and racial intolerance – people who are once again preparing to hold another of their neo-Nazi marches near the homes of the local Roma community in Krupka – we will, once again, together with the churches, hold ecumenical religious services and religious assemblies against these dangerous manifestations of racism and xenophobia being held in the immediate vicinity of buildings predominantly inhabited by young Roma families with children.