Police refuse to give news server Romea.cz the footage they gave to Czech Television

The South Moravian Regional Police are refusing to provide news server Romea.cz with some of the video footage of the 1 May events in Brno. The footage, taken from police helicopter, has been provided to other media outlets such as Czech Television. This refusal is just the latest in a recent series of events in which police have taken unusual measures, some of which have either bordered on the illegal or been directly illegal.

News server Romea.cz initially requested that the South Moravian Regional Police send them video footage taken by the police helicopters. The news server and the magazine want to use the footage to better inform their readers about the events of 1 May. Petra Vedrová, spokesperson for the South Moravian Regional Police, at first responded positively to the request, which was made by telephone: “As soon as I get to the computer I will send you the same thing we sent Czech Television.” However, she then sent an e-mail to Romea.cz which read: “We provided video footage on the day after the maneuvers only to public broadcast media in order to restrict its possible misuse by parties representing various opinions – we have not provided it to any of the representatives or promoters of any of the assemblies that took place.”

Klára Kalibová, a leading Czech expert on the law as it relates to violent hate crime and a lawyer with the In IUSTITIA association, has questioned the police’s approach. According to her, it is customary for police to inform the public about their activities through all media.

“Depending on the specific circumstances of the case, the provision of information can be refused if its publication would endanger the course of a criminal proceedings, violate the principle of the presumption of innocence, be irrelevant to a criminal proceedings, or risk the right to privacy of persons under 18 years of age. However, when police do decide to publish information, they are not authorized to distinguish between media channels, which ones they will give it to and which ones they won’t,” Kalibová told news server Romea.cz.

“The magazine Romano voďi, and therefore its related internet news server Romea.cz, is properly registered with the Czech Culture Ministry as an ordinary media outlet and its editors are members of the Journalists’ Syndicate of the Czech Repulbic (Syndikát novinářů ČR). I therefore consider the approach of the South Moravian Regional Police and the statement by their spokesperson, Petra Vedrová, to be simply scandalous. What will the police do next, refuse to send us a press release? How far is this going to go? Maybe it will go so far as the police only giving information to media that don’t criticize them,” said Zdeněk Ryšavý, who is editor-in-chief of news server Romea.cz and the Executive Director of the ROMEA association. “We are filing a complaint over the spokesperson’s behavior and considering other options,” Ryšavý said.

This is not the first case of police taking a dubious approach or behaving strangely in relation to neo-Nazi events recently. Police tactics recently have included giving verbal assistance directly to assemblies and marches organized by the DSSS, National Resistance, Workers’ Youth and Autonomous Nationalists, casting doubt upon or directly physically attacking those opposing these organizations, and denying that police officers have broken the law.

For example, during the 1 May blockade of Brno, when editors from news server Romea.cz asked the police spokesperson why some officers had been seen with their service identification numbers covered up on their vests, she said they might have them covered because they had them on their helmets. Service numbers on helmets cannot be seen from the front and the law says the numbers must be visible. These officers were breaking the law. Several riot police broke the same law while on duty at the events in Krupka and Nový Bydžov.

The spokesperson for the Hradec Králové Regional Police claimed that a group of 200 “left-wing extremists” protested against the neo-Nazis there. This information was used without any verification by the private TV Nova channel and other media outlets. The spokesperson has not yet apologized for this untrue claim. At a regular meeting of Task Force C, where ministerial bureaucrats, NGOs monitoring right-wing extremism, and police officers meet to discuss the fight against right-wing extremism, representatives of the Police Presidium told those present that the Hradec Králové Regional Police spokesperson should apologize for her misleading characterization of the demonstrators.

In Krupka, police dispersed a religious gathering that stood in the way of the neo-Nazi march. They did so on the basis of methodological instructions issued by the Czech Interior Ministry’s Security Policy Department (Odbor bezpečnostní politiky Ministerstva vnitra ČR) which included a completely new interpretation of the law on assembly in relation to religious assembly. The law does not address this specific issue – any assembly which is not required to announce itself to the authorities in advance, such as a religious assembly, is not further addressed by the law. The ministerial bureaucrats have therefore submitted an analysis based on a section of the law that does not even exist. “They have assumed the role of judges or legislators and have broken the law in so doing, and they did it so police could assist the neo-Nazis and beat up their opponents, including two clergy during prayer,” František Kostlán of the ROMEA association said.

Martin Šimáček, head of the Czech Government Agency for Social Inclusion in Roma Localities, is of a similar opinion. “Religious assemblies do not have to be pre-announced, so it is not clear whether an announced assembly or a religious assembly should have precedence over a certain location. It’s a loophole in the law. In its analysis, the Interior Ministry leaned toward the idea that a religious assembly cannot take precedence. My objection is that there are no grounds for that standpoint. I would be very glad if there were to be a judicial ruling saying how to proceed,” Šimáček said during an interview for news server Aktuálně.cz.

Kostlán says police in Brno, Krupka and Nový Bydžov permitted neo-Nazi speech-givers to complete their speeches even after they had broken the law on disseminating hatred against minorities. “The Hradec Králové Regional Police did not arrest the speaker from Slovakia, who gave an evidently racist speech, until the entire event was over. After several weeks of evaluating the evidence, the police said no laws were broken by the speakers. This is unconstitutional behavior on their part. The right to dignity is enshrined in the Constitution and is completely equivalent to the right to assembly. When police let the neo-Nazis espouse racism and xenophobia in localities where most of the residents are Roma, when they let neo-Nazis chant slogans during their marches like ‘We don’t want these whores here’ or ‘We don’t want black whores’, then the police are abetting a violation of the right to dignity. Of course, the main blame rests with the mayors and municipal bureaucrats who fail to disperse the neo-Nazi gatherings. Frequently they are under pressure from Interior Ministry bureaucrats and police not to do so,” Kostlán says.

“At the march In Nový Bydžov there were around 500 extremists. A significant portion of the speeches given on the square by the organizers themselves should have led to the immediate dispersal of the assembly on the spot. However, that didn’t happen. The mayor of Krupka had an even more difficult task, the DSSS were more careful there. It was more difficult to decide whether there was a reason to disperse them, but even there I heard brutal slogans in the crowd during the march, such as ‘Gypsies get to work’, ‘You’re vermin’, and ‘Gypsies to the gas chambers’. However, several days later, the man who gave the last speech at that rally was given a suspended sentence. That is very important,” Martin Šimáček says.

In a Czech Interior Ministry manual published for municipalities about the law on assembly, this problem is addressed as follows: “The right to freely and peacefully assemble is not an absolute or unrestricted right. The protection of the rights and freedoms of others must be respected, as must the protection of public order and other interests listed in the regulations… during the exercise of this right, the rights of others, including rights of minorities, must be respected… Fundamental rights and freedoms are completely equivalent to the law on assembly and both must be equivalently upheld.”

On 26 March 2009, the Prague Municipal Court issued a verdict on these issues (no. 11 Ca 146/2008-65), which says: “The principles of democracy undoubtedly include the principle that people are free and equal in dignity and rights, and the inviolability of the person is one of the basic principles of a democratic society, as are the right to the preservation of human dignity, the right to choose one’s nationality, and the principle that membership in an ethnic minority or nationality shall not be detrimental. Anyone who wants to exercise the right to assembly must respect these fundamental principles and the freedoms of others. This is why Law No. 84/1990 Coll. establishes the reasons for which an assembly may be banned or dispersed. Incitement of hatred and intolerance toward minorities is one of the reasons established by law for banning or dispersing an assembly. Incitement of such hatred must conceptually be considered a rejection of democratic principles. The European Court has ruled that measures aimed at restricting the right to assembly are permissible when the rejection of democratic principles is at issue.”