Markus Pape on the Czech media, discrimination and extremism

The following piece is part of a series of editorials on the relationship of the media to the issue of right-wing extremism and reporting on the Roma minority, the topic of a round table series recently convened by the ROMEA association. Commentator and journalist Markus Pape spoke at this series on developments in the Czech media with respect to reporting on discrimination and extremism. In his view, the situation has improved compared to the 1990s, but a lack of investigative reporting remains a problem. We are publishing his lecture in full below:

The media in the Czech Republic have undergone significant development in the area of reporting on discrimination and extremism. In the 1990s, such reporting was almost exclusively about “skinheads”, but today the term “neo-Nazis” is commonly used. The problem of discrimination is also not made light of as often today. However, there are ongoing problems: A lack of investigative reporting, stereotyping of minorities, and the lack of opportunity for ordinary members of minorities to express their views on issues.

I would like to start with a small aside here: I love newspapers. Even though I am criticizing the media today, it does not mean that I do not value the work of journalists. On the contrary – in the distant past, village chronicles provided only one point of view. Today the town chronicle as a testament of the age is often replaced by newspapers which report from various points of view. I write for the newspapers myself, so this critique of the media naturally applies to me as well. I would like to illustrate the problem I am discussing here by comparing the media’s presentation of two significant events, a pogrom on the Roma in Písek and the arson attack on a Romani family in Vítkov.

Pogrom on the Roma in Písek – September 1993

I am basing my first part of this lecture on an analysis entitled “Is it a crime to drown a Romani person? The violent death of Tibor Danihel as presented in the Czech press”. This study by Anna Šabatová, Jiří Homoláč and Kamila Karhanová was published in the year 2003 in a proceedings entitled “The Image of the Roma in Central European Mass Media after 1989.”

On Friday 24 September 1993, a young boy died in broad daylight in the center of the town of Písek. He drowned in the Otava river. One of the first reports of his death was published in the daily Lidová demokracie (LD -“People’s Democracy”) with the headline “Death during a skinhead march”:

“The atmosphere in town is not good and I do not want to give any more details about an ongoing investigation,” Mayor of Písek Tom Zajíček told the LD reporter yesterday… “For the time being it is not clear whether the group came to Písek intentionally or whether this was an unfortunate accident. There are only a few individuals who are part of the skinhead movement here in Písek.” Yesterday representatives of the Písek town hall met with members of the Roma community to help preserve the peace, which will contribute to the rapid investigation of this case. (tš, LD 28. 9. 93, pg. 6.)

The reporting of this incident at first did not exceed the framework of normal crime reporting. “Skinheads” were written about on the one hand and “local Roma” on the other. The reporting on the burial of the deceased Romani boy was done in the same spirit. Here is a quote from a report in the daily Zemědělské noviny (ZN – “Farmers’ News”), headlined “Funeral without provocation”:

“Yesterday in Písek a cymbalo band played as mourners paid their last respects to 18-year-old Tibor Daniel [sic], the Romani youth who died tragically last week under unpleasant circumstances.… According to the Mayor of Písek, Tom Zajíček, the incident was definitely not a display of any kind of acute racial hatred. The calm, dignified course of yesterday’s funeral confirmed that as well.” (bm, ZN 2. 10. 1993, pg. 3.)

I would also like to quote from the conclusions of the above-mentioned study:

The creation of the media image of the Písek case is characterized by several features typical of the approach of the Czech media to violent crimes committed against Romani victims by majority-society perpetrators. Because the Roma and skinheads are perceived as two enemy groups in perpetual conflict, the mere correlation of these two categories in the reporting on events such as the death of Tibor Danihel gives the stories sufficient coherence and meaning.

However, this does not mean that racist motivation was automatically ascribed to the attackers. Instead, young Roma and skinheads were presented as two groups perpetually settling scores with one another. The terms used (“incident”, or “clash”) made it seem as if the conflict did not concern the majority society. We have here what is termed a “relational pairing” of Roma – skinheads. This pairing “rules out” the idea that the assailants might be motivated by racism and precludes readers from seeking any other cause for the “incident”.

In December 1994, the District Court in Písek delivered a first-instance verdict in the case. Two of the 18 defendants were given suspended sentences for rioting, while the others were acquitted. Sociologist Ivan Gabal responded to the verdict by publishing the following commentary in the daily MF Dnes (MFD), headlined, “Try to murder a Gypsy”:

At the court in Písek they will give you the following advice: There should be lots of you, you should shave your heads and cover your faces. Don’t touch the Gypsies. All you have to do is chase them into deep water. As for those who will try to prevent you, just block them out. During the trial make sure you threaten the witnesses, lie, refer to collective responsibility, and make a show of your patriotism. The worst that can happen is you will get a suspended sentence. With enough of you involved, you should be able to clean out a medium-sized town within a year. For two years I have watched while life has written exactly such a scenario, and it was just a matter of time before it occurred to someone else.… What about the state? There are the unsolved cases of Molotov cocktails thrown into a Roma home and the fascist spree at Terezín… the covertly racist, inanely populist statements by the Mayor of Prague during the election campaign… the re-qualification of racist attacks as misdemeanors.… Czech politics simply supports a sense of cultural ethnocentricity and secretiveness which clears the way for racism and intolerance. (MFD 6. 12. 1994, pg. 12.)

With the passage of time it is now necessary to ask whether the state ever took the necessary steps to prevent other such attacks. In response to Gabal’s commentary, influential lawyer Luděk Lisse, who was still in law school at the time, wrote the following piece for the same paper, headlined, “Contempt of court is not the approach”:

A Czech intellectual, strengthened by a wave of European cosmopolitanism, has given himself the heroic task of civilizing the barbarians. In pursuit of this sacred idea he is not afraid to openly attack covert racism in politics, the mass media, or a court verdict. This approach places him on the same side as those whom he is protecting, which in this case is the Roma population – which is to say, on the side of contempt for the court, which means contempt for the law, which means contempt for the rule of law. (MFD 10. 12. 1994, pg. 12.)

Once again, I quote the study:

The other possible relational pair, Roma – Czech majority society, is either never proposed in most of these first reports, or is mentioned only to be ruled out. It was not until the first very light verdicts were handed down that the relationship between the Roma and the majority was raised to indicate the possibly racist motivation of the assailants.

It took five more years for the justice system to issue a final verdict. I quote from a report by the Czech Press Agency (ČTK) dated 30 June 1999:

On Friday 24 September 1993, a group of skinheads drove four young Roma into the Otava river and used violence to prevent them from leaving the water. One of the Roma, 18-year-old Tibor Danihel, drowned. This incident has been handled by the courts at many levels; the legal qualification of the crime has been changed several times, as has the number of defendants. In the beginning, 18 assailants were charged with committing the crimes of violence against a group of inhabitants and individuals and battery. Almost six years later, in June 1999, the High Court found three people guilty of racially motivated murder and attempted murder and sentenced them to many years in prison.

The approach of the media changed over the course of those years. What was first reported as a tragically ending “clash” between two enemy groups was eventually reported as a racist murder. What led the media to this change? Mainly the demanding work of one person, a man who became the attorney-in-fact for the victimized family and represented them to the police and judiciary. The anarchist Jakub Polák, cooperating with non-profit organizations, celebrities, and primarily with the Office of the President of the Republic, attacked that first court verdict and pushed the courts to re-evaluate their view of the entire incident. Thanks to his work and the support given to his work by civil society, he succeeded in convincing the court to evaluate the crime according to the truth. This eventually led to a change in the opinions presented in the media.

During the course of the 1990s, at least in this one case, the Czech media’s presentation of Roma-related news changed. However, even in 1999 the media was still writing about “skinheads”, as if the perpetrators were not proponents of a specific ideology and their crime had not been politically motivated. Moreover, to this day newspaper readers do not know who Tibor Danihel and his family were. He became, and essentially remains, the all-but-anonymous victim of a serious crime.

Arson attack on a Romani family in Vítkov – April 2010

Now we have arrived at our second example, which is much more current and has not yet resulted in a court verdict. On Saturday 18 April 2009, a little girl who was not yet two years old almost burned to death during a fire in her family’s home in the Silesian town of Vítkov. Even before the first reports of the incident hit the newspapers, Czech President Václav Klaus issued a very unusual statement about this serious event:

“I recently paid my respects to the memory of Jan Zajíc in the town of Vítkov and the meeting with the kind local people there was an enormous experience for me. This experience makes me even more alarmed by the brutal, repugnant crime which has taken place there. What kind of people could want to set a small child on fire? This monstrous crime must be investigated and severely punished.”

Was the president implying that other crimes should not be investigated or severely punished? How did he manage to receive information about the crime not even 12 hours after it occurred? The president was speaking of a “crime” before police ever issued an official statement to the media, at a time when they were still ascertaining the cause of the fire. After all, couldn’t it have been started by neglect?

It turned out that the fire had been intentionally started, as an official report from the police soon confirmed. It was an arson attack which police should have expected, because it had been preceded by a high number of other arson attempts which did not result in tragedy. Even the president suddenly felt the need to get results and called on the police to thoroughly investigate the case. Vítkov was just one attack too many.

The Vítkov case is completely atypical, but it was precisely this case that opened some journalists’ eyes. The developments in the case are generally known. After four months of costly, demanding investigative work by several dozen detectives, made possible directly by the police president, roughly 160 police officers participated in the arrest of 12 suspects in mid-August. Four young men were taken into custody and as of February this year were charged with racially motivated attempted murder. The trial will begin in mid-May and the media is already referring to the perpetrators as neo-Nazis. Why? Because members of the “Anti-fascist Action” (Antifa) group have long been following neo-Nazi activities, and shortly after the arrest of the suspects, Antifa published information on its website about which neo-Nazi events the suspects had attended, where and with whom. Antifa, by the way, continues to be classified by the Czech Interior Ministry as an extremist group.

In what other way has the media’s approach fundamentally changed with respect to this case? Natálka’s family has become celebrities, and all of society is sharing the enormous suffering of the little girl and her family as if they knew her intimately.

Kumar Vishwanathan, chair of the Life Together association, has helped Natálka’s family from the beginning and commented on their situation for the media. He has maintained contact with the family and objected repeatedly to the haranguing of the family that was done by the Mayor of Vítkov, who publicly indicated that the father’s lifestyle might have been a contributing factor to the crime. In the end, some media, for the first time ever, even provided readers and viewers with the opportunity for insight into the victims. This is a quote from an interview with Natálka’s parents which the journalist believes is the most open interview they have ever given (AHA 23 August 2009.):

Reporter: Can you remember the moment when you asked yourselves: Will we have another child?

Pavel, Natálka’s mother: After three girls I wanted a boy – a football player.

Anna, Natálka’s mother: I kept it a secret that she would be a girl. I saw how much he wanted a boy. Then I couldn’t keep it a secret any more. You should have seen his reaction.

Pavel: I was pretty disappointed, because I wanted a Patrik, but Natálka more than made up for it. She even acts like a boy sometimes….

At the end of the article, the reporter comments as follows:

After I interviewed Natálka’s parents, I spent a long time trying to understand the dimensions of the horror they had experienced. They spoke of their little daughter with such love, as if my first questions had, for a moment, succeeded in leading their thoughts away from their concern for her to a time when they were practically carefree compared to today…. During such an interview one fully comprehends the dimensions of the bestiality that has been committed against them. While they do keep asking why it happened, they don’t wonder why it happened to them. Since their own childhoods they have been used to the fact that members of the majority society consider them “different” because of their skin color. However, they still cannot understand why someone attacked them at a time when they were unable to defend themselves. When they spoke it was obvious how much they love their family. These people really love one another and can find no explanation for what has happened to them: “If Natálka had fallen ill, you could place the blame on the Lord, but we hope they will punish the flesh-and-blood person who is responsible for our suffering.”

This is a new, unprecedented element in the Czech media. Suddenly, a Romani victim has become a flesh-and-blood human being in the eyes of the public. Here I would like to quote from another interview published on the news server Romea.cz:

Reporter: You are handling this all admirably. Where do you get the strength? Where does it come from?

Anna, Natálka’s mother: Natálka gives me the strength. Without her, I just don’t know what I would do… In the beginning I couldn’t even stand on my own two feet. What helped me was to see Natálka change over time, improve day by day. Suddenly I told myself I couldn’t just throw my life away, that I had to do something with myself so I could take care of Natálka. Who else was going to do it? I had to get myself together and stand on my own two feet – literally. I knew no one would take as good care of my children as I would. She got me onto my feet.

Unfortunately, to this day we normally find stereotypical, confrontational and negative descri
tions of news concerning the Roma in the Czech media. This means society is just reconfirming its own prejudices again and again. This inspires young people to commit other racist crimes. Only the painstaking work of various individuals on behalf of the victims and the support shown to them by civil society can break this vicious circle, reveal the true background to the problem, introduce non-confrontational elements into the description of the problem, and portray the victims not merely as objects of media interest, but as human beings. For various reasons, investigative work into cases of racist violence committed against the Roma is mostly not performed by journalists, but is primarily performed by “activists” or groups such as “Anti-fascist Action”.

Markus Pape is a journalist and commentator, an expert on the history of the Lety concentration camp and the issue of violent neo-Nazi attacks against the Roma, and a longtime proponent of human rights. He is currently the attorney-in-fact for the victims of last April’s arson attack in Vítkov.