Neo-Nazi demonstration in Vlasim should be banned-activists

Anti-extremist civic groups today protested against the Vlasim town hall’s decision to issue a permit for a demonstration the far right National Corporativism movement intends to stage in the town on Saturday, pointing out that such a demonstration should not have been allowed.

Klara Kalibova from the Tolerance and Civic Society group told CTK today that it was evident from the invitation to the event entitled the Day of Race that the event is aimed against the Romany community.

She said that its organisers had committed a crime by publishing such an invitation on their Internet page.
Vlasim Mayor Ludek Jenista argued that the event had been properly announced.

"The organisers used the words ‘national racial awareness’ in the application, which is quite an unassailable term," he said.
Kalibova said she firmly believed that the town hall should have either banned the demonstration or it should at least dissolve it on the spot on Saturday.

For instance, police dissolved this year’s May Day demonstration in Brno, south Moravia, organised by right-wing radicals, immediately after its start. The police acted on the recommendation by expert Miroslav Mares who then said that it was a demonstration organised by a neo-Nazi organisation, Kalibova said.

It is quite clear from the invitation to the demonstration published on the National Corporativism’s website that the event in Vlasim aims at suppressing and limiting the rights of Romany citizens, she said.

National Corporativism called on its website for the fight against "self-appointed parasites" in Vlasim.

"Gangs of Gypsy criminals roaming the town streets instill fear in all decent Czechs," the invitation reads.

It says in the conclusion that the radicals "have decided to show all asocial elements who are plundering our Vlasim that there is not only a couple of fighters in the town who could be counted on one’s fingers."

Kalibova said that the authors of the invitation committed a crime of instigating hatred to a group of people and limiting their rights and freedoms.

Police are preparing to monitor the Saturday demonstration in Vlasim.

"The Vlasim town hall has asked us for cooperation and we have taken certain measures, which we will not specify," local police spokeswoman Zuzana Stranska told CTK today.

The demonstration is to begin at 15:00 and end at 18:00, after which the participants will march along the town streets to the central square where they will deliver speeches.

Similar extremist events are not rare in the Czech Republic. Last weekend, more than 200 members of the skinhead movement took part in a protest march through the east Bohemian town of Svitavy.

They protested against what they call a judicial error due to which a skinhead was sentenced for having murdered a Romany in the early 2000s.

In 2004, Vlastimil Pechanec, then a 23-year-old skinhead, was sentenced by the Prague High Court to 17 years in prison for the racially-motivated murder of a Romany man in 2001.
Police registered no incidents during the event.