Several people were arrested by police on Saturday during an assembly convened in the town of Teplice by the Workers’ Social Justice Party (Dělnická strana sociální spravedlnosti – DSSS). Police spokesperson Dan Vítek announced the arrests.
During the course of the march, roughly 100 promoters of the ultra-right DSSS engaged in a conflict in Šanovský Park with the same number of anarchists. Police kept both groups from clashing directly.
DSSS chair Tomáš Vandas and his party members came to Teplice to make speeches in the runup to the local elections there, iDNES.cz reports. They exploited alleged tensions between local residents and spa guests as a topic.
Some locals have complaints, mainly about the disorder that Arab spa clients allegedly cause in the Šanovský Park, and are also said to be bothered by the fact that people from the Persian Gulf are allegedly buying up land near the town. Vandas gave his usual hateful speech at the gathering, cursing the government, which he believes is corrupt, the European Union, and the Czech Republic’s policy on accepting immigrants.
Police officers arrested five people, two of them anarchists who threw PET bottles of beer in the direction of Vandas. All five were charged with misdemeanors and released.
The demonstration ended at 19:00 and the town was peaceful for the rest of the evening. During their intervention, police officers confiscated one baseball bat and a knuckleduster.
