Czech Republic: DSSS member arrested for promoting a movement to suppress human rights

Yesterday police officers arrested and charged Michaela Dupová, a member of the Workers’ Social Justice Party (Dělnická strana sociální spravedlnosti – DSSS) and a former leader of the neo-Nazi group Resistance Women Unity, for wearing tattoos of banned extremist symbols. She faces up to three years in prison for promoting and supporting a movement aimed at suppressing human rights and freedoms. The court will decide whether she should be remanded into custody.

Officers charged the 22-year-old woman after evaluating video footage of last year’s neo-Nazi demonstration in Kladno. “She has the banned symbols all over her body,” said Michaela Nováková, spokesperson for the Kladno Police, who added that Dupová is also on parole. Ivo Poštolka, spokesperson for the Kladno District Court, told the Czech Press Agency that the court has not yet decided whether to remand Dupová into custody or not.

Dupová was remanded into custody for more than a year after the police raids of October 2009. She faced charges of promoting and supporting a movement aimed at suppressing human rights and freedoms for having allegedly participated in posting promotional stickers in the center of Prague for the National Resistance (Národní odpor), an informal organization of Czech neo-Nazis.

Together with other extremists, she is also said to have organized an ultra-right assembly in Jihlava in 2010. According to the case file, she arranged for drums and the production of a funeral wreath to lay in honor of fallen Wehrmacht soldiers. Dupová rejected all of those charges. She was released after posting CZK 400 000 bail and making a written promise to refrain from criminal activity.

The case file also alleges that she contributed to organizing and producing a concert of white power music in support of neo-Nazis who were being prosecuted or who had been convicted. The concert took place in February 2009 in Srby (Kladno district) and was attended by about 120 people. The prosecution charges she was aware that both the performers and the audience would be disseminating the ideologies of Nazism and neo-Nazism at the concert.

Last year, Dupová was sentenced after being tried along with the leaders of the dissolved Workers’ Party (Dělnická strana). The municipal court in Brno gave her seven months’ probation, suspended for a trial period of two years, for statements she made at a 1 May demonstration there in 2009.