Czech online daily wants public prosecutor disciplined for anti-Romani prejudice
The online daily Deník Referendum has delivered a motion to Czech Justice Minister Robert Pelikán (ANO 2011) asking that disciplinary proceedings be initiated against state prosecutor JUDr. Zdeňka Galková. The editors believe her work for the Prague 1 office has been extremely problematic because the activities of that particular state prosecutor’s office clearly have an impact on the republic as a whole, as Prague 1 is the district in the country where the biggest number of political speeches and public activities takes place.
Part of the motion is a list of seven instances in which the prosecutor has probably failed her office. The daily says that the Justice Minister himself would have to file the motion for a disciplinary proceedings.
Galková is personally connected with many of the cases in which the Prague 1 District State Prosecutor’s Office has proceeded in an absolutely prejudiced an untrustworthy way, according to the editors. That is why they have drawn up the list of seven instances in which they presume she has personally failed, briefly analyzed them, and asked the minister to redress them.
The list of the controversial professional activities includes, for example, her defense of the anti-Semitic speeches made by Slovak nationalist Marián Magát, her tolerance for the incitement of Adam B. Bartoš and Tomio Okamura during the demonstrations to which some participants brought a mock-up of a gallows, her use of the openly racist website whitemedia.info as a source of evidence, or her inflammatory (and unfounded) criticism of research by Amnesty International into the discrimination of Romani pupils in the Czech Republic. In their motion to the Justice Minister, the editors pointed out that the common denominator to Galková’s approach has been her apparent bias and prejudice.
Galková’s decisions, according to the editors, have directly contravened democratic values and compromised the constitutional foundations of the democratic state. Disciplinary offenses are defined by law as breaches of the obligations of the public prosecutor that threaten public confidence in the activities of the Prosecutor’s Office and in the expertise of its procedures and that possibly reduce the dignity and seriousness of the position of state prosecutor.
