Czech court says former MP may be sued for inciting anti-Roma hatred
Former Czech legislator Otto Chaloupka, who is facing a lawsuit over statements he made about Romani people on the Facebook social networking site, has failed with a request for the case to be exempted from the jurisdiction of law enforcement. The Supreme Court has decided in closed session that the District Court for Prague 1 may hear the case.
Supreme Court spokesperson Petr Knötig communicated the decision without further details today. In his request, Chaloupka argued that he had published the controversial posts as an MP directly from the Chamber of Deputies, which made him subject to immunity.
In the past, in the case of Vít Bárta and three rebellious former lawmakers with the Civic Democrats (ODS), the Supreme Court controversially decided to exempt the section of an indictment against them concerning actions related to their performance as legislators while in the Chamber of Deputies from review by the courts or police. The court has not provided Chaloupka with similar protection for writing on his own Facebook page.
The indictment was filed in April by the District State Prosecutor for Prague 1. According to the prosecutors, Chaloupka committed incitement to hate a group of persons and to suppress their rights and freedoms.
The politician first wrote on his Facebook profile about events in the town of Duchcov (Teplice district), when a small group of Romani people assaulted and beat up a non-Romani married couple, an incident that sparked anti-Romani sentiment. "Decent people have long put up with aggression, thievery, and unjustified demands for more and more advantages," Chaloupka wrote in a text responding to a publicized statement by a particular Romani leader (see below).
In the subsequent discussion on Facebook, Chaloupka added that "People are on edge, all it will take is a couple more gypsy provocations and it will kick off. Even riot police won’t protect them then."
Criminal charges for defamation and dissemination of hatred in campaign advertising have also been filed against Otto Chaloupka (and against the infamous con artist Lukáš Kohout) by Jan Čonka of the ROMEA organization. "In their speeches, Otto Chaloupka and Lukáš Kohout publicly incite hatred against Romani people and defame them. Both gentlemen are exploiting populist, unethical tensions in society targeting the Romani minority. Understandably, they are generalizing, which unfortunately has become the usual way to attack Romani people as a whole. What’s more, we are not Gypsies, but Roma. Their words have insulted and outraged me," Čonka, who works in Prague on a Romani employment project, told news server Romea.cz
Chaloupka has made many anti-Romani statements, some examples of which are below. As a legislator he also proposed a law that targeted Romani people.
The bill introduced the concept of at-risk individuals or families (a person or family who draws on aid to those in material distress for a longer period of time; who visits gaming rooms/casinos; who uses alcohol or narcotics; who uses money from welfare for a purposes other than meeting his or her basic living needs; who doesn’t support his or her children in their proper school attendance; who commits crimes, etc.). "So-called at-risk persons will be obliged to show up at a designated time on business days at a designated place. They will have to remain there eight hours and obey the orders of the person they are entrusted to. Their welfare will be taken away if they fail to uphold this obligation," Chaloupka wrote.
Another of Chaloupka’s notions was the unification of conditions (unified methodology) for selecting children to attend the "practical schools" (previously the "special schools") so that neither the director of a school nor a child’s parents would be allowed to participate in deciding where children enrol. Chaloupka inserted that passage into the bill after consulting representatives of the Equal Opportunities Party (SRP), the vice-chair of which, Čeněk Růžička, had previously attempted to advocate such an idea.
"My idea is that only experts who are subject to review should make the decision as to whether a child belongs in a practical or a mainstream school, and the SRP stands by this idea," Růžička told news server Romea.cz at the time. Chaloupka had praised the then-SRP representatives, including former chair Štefan Tišer, saying his consultation with them was a great benefit to his bills.
The SRP initiated the meeting with Chaloupka but later distanced itself from the lawmaker and began to claim it had never provided him any consultation. Chaloupka has also found himself on trial on suspicion of corruption.
The legislator allegedly forced his assistant to pay him back part of his salary, a charge the politician denies. A District Court in Hodonín acquitted him of those charges last March.
Chaloupka was a legislator beginning in 2010 for the Public Affairs Party (Věci veřejné). After its collapse, he founded the Republic Party and became its chair, winning 0.14 % of the vote in this year’s EP elections.
Otto Chaloupka has earned a sad reputation for making the following statements about Roma:
"Romani leaders first and foremost should start making decent livings somehow. They are parasites on the Romani community the same way the Romani community is a parasite on the majority society…."
"Romani people are establishing a political party once more. What do they expect from this? More leverage to gain more advantages? What more advantages could they possibly want?"
"Today [the Roma] don’t have to work, they just complain all the time, a wave of physical violence is rising against the majority society and we just keep backing down…. I understand the effort to do something about this, to do our best to include them, to re-educate one generation of these inadaptables and give them all the conditions in which to become decent people who won’t bother anyone and won’t be scorned by anyone, but how many years has it been already that we have been doing our best to include them somehow and it has had no effect? What is problematic is that this costs a lot of money and delivers no results, that’s how it is with them from one generation to the next, and they are making no effort to change it. They cost us hundreds of millions of crowns, and what do we get for that investment? Physical attacks, robbery, shoplifting, etc. If you don’t work, then you don’t deserve anything. If you start shoplifting, you should be sent to prison. I’ve heard the opinion that if we take away their welfare they will commit even more crime. No, if you do something like that you will go to prison and next time you’ll think twice about it. Until the revolution it was obligatory to work here. The Gypsies had to work hard. They got shovels, and while some of them just used them to lean on, at least they had to be somewhere during working hours and pretend to work. Today they don’t have to work, they just keep complaining, a wave of physical violence is rising against the majority society and we just keep backing down. What are we waiting for? For them to slice us up on the street with machetes, to steal pensioners’ wallets, etc., with impunity? If someone [non-Romani] assaults a Gypsy then it’s a racially motivated felony and he will be punished to the full extent of the law, but when a Gypsy beats up a white woman, robs an elderly lady or rapes, terrorizes and tortures a 12-year-old white boy, he gets the same punishment as if all he did was lift a wallet. It can’t go on like this and it’s heading for a big row. Once people see that the state won’t take care of them, then they will take matters into their own hands and it will be bad. I won’t be surprised."
When Romani leader František Tomáš called on the mayor of Duchcov to come to a Romani meeting, Chaloupka responded as follows:
"That was very clever of that gypsy leader. They do not lack arrogance or presumption. People are on edge, all it will take is a couple more gypsy provocations and it will kick off. Even riot police won’t protect them then."
Chaloupka also posted the following open letter to Mr Tomáš on his personal Facebook profile:
"Decent people have long put up with aggression, thievery, and unjustified demands for more and more advantages. As every reasonable person knows, this can’t go on forever …. People have had enough, Mr Tomáš. They are out of patience. Each one of your provocations pushes us toward that imaginary line in the sand. You keep pushing, so something has to give, and soon. Do not rely on being protected by the state or on being permitted to do anything you like. People here do not feel protected by the state, and it is only a question of time before they take their own protection into their own hands. After that, Mr Tomáš, it will be bad. Take it from me, this is a good piece of free advice."
