Czech ministry wants to abolish extremist party

The Czech Interior Ministry today submitted a proposal that the extra-parliamentary ultra-right Workers’ Party (DS) be abolished and the government is to deal with it within two weeks, Interior Minister Jiri Langer told journalists today.

Langer (the Civic Democratic Party, ODS) said the party was extremist.

"We’ve lost patience with the activities of the Workers’ Party," Langer said.

"It is impossible for activities that are incompatible with the democratic order to operate under the veil of free competition of parties," Langer said.

Langer said his proposal to dissolve the DS was connected with the decision to dissolve the Communist Youth Association at the end of 2006.

Langer said he did not distinguish between the leftist and rightist extremisms.

DS leader Tomas Vandas told CTK "the decision was absolutely absurd" and without any legal substantiation.

"The DS has never violated any law of the Czech Republic," Vandas said, adding that this amounted to the effort to frighten an opposition party.

Vandas said even if the Supreme Administrative Court decided to dissolve the party, its members would not stop with their activities.

"We will continue whether Langer likes it or not," Vandas said.

Supporters of the DS as well as of the extremist National Resistance and the Autonomous Nationalists recently met in Litvinov, north Bohemia.

They reacted to the Romanies’ resistance to members of the DS’s militant Defence Corps that arrived in the Janov housing estate in Litvinov, inhabited mainly by Romanies, to monitor the situation in early October.

The extremists clashed with policemen, but police prevented their brawls with Romanies.

The extra-parliamentry DS plans to stage another meeting in Litvinov on November 17, the anniversary of the communist regime’s fall in 1989, officially announced as a protest "against positive discrimination and police violence."

The Autonomous Nationalists recently released an open letter on its website in which they said they would return to the town if it kept being "unable to solve the Romany question."

Litvinov Mayor Milan Stovicek (Civic Democrats, ODS) said the meeting had been announced to the Town Hall and that the town would be prepared for it.

The extremist Workers’ Party, established in 2003, organises events that often attract neo-Nazis.

One of the DS candidates in the October regional elections, Erik Sedlacek, was recently sentenced to three years in prison for support and promotion of movements suppressing human rights and freedoms, but the verdict has not taken effect yet.