Secretary to Czech President Klaus condemns TV coverage of Vitkov arson trial

Petr Hájek, the deputy head of Czech President Václav Klaus’s office, is taking aim at Czech Television. It bothers him that the public broadcaster programmed live coverage of the closing arguments in the trial of the four men charged with committing the arson attack in Vítkov. According to Hájek, this constitutes “pressure” and is an attack on the court’s independence. It’s too bad I don’t have the opportunity to ask Mr Hájek whether he really has so little faith in the justice system. I would like to ask him if he would be making this same criticism if his own child had been maimed in the attack.

The trial underway is not one of scrap metal thieves or pub brawlers. It is the trial of four racists who threw Molotov cocktails into a house where people were sleeping, including children. Those deadly cocktails didn’t go flying through the air because these guys wanted to have fun or see what a Molotov can do. They went there with the intention of murdering “Gypsies” because their disgusting, monstrous ideology approves of it.

This trial concerns us all. It could have been my daughter or yours who was maimed. That is why it deserves this media attention, rightfully so in my view. This is not about “hysteria”. Speaking for myself, I want to see, on television, the faces of the murderers who tried to kill a two-year-old child, and I want to see them when they receive the punishment they deserve.

No one can possibly take this crap about media interest influencing the court seriously. If a judge can’t take media pressure and still make decisions according to the law, that person shouldn’t be a judge. Moreover, I think the effect of broadcasting the hearings has been the exact opposite. The public has been given the opportunity to follow the work of everyone involved. Does Mr Hájek believe the general public is not interested in how the justice system approaches this case?

Overall, I have the feeling that some people in this country are losing their minds. Through my job at news server iDNES.cz I basically see the raw material which becomes the news, just as I see the readers’ contributions to the discussion pages. In the past few days these have once again become nauseating. It is amazing how often people praise the unfinished murder in Vítkov, how often people write about how little Natálka was just going to grow up a “whore” with 20 children mooching off the state, how often people write that the “Gypsies” deserved it because they didn’t own the house they were living in and that’s why those guys didn’t do anything so bad. After all, the murder of criminals isn’t murder – is it?

What in God’s name would these people write if it were their children the Nazis had set on fire? Would they approve? Would they write in comments like the following?

“Those brave young men – I completely approve of what they did and I do NOT feel sorry for Natálie.”

“Me neither, she’ll just give birth to another 20 of them.”

“Exactly, I approve of any method of preventing the spread of these inadaptable people. They are nothing but trouble.”

No, it’s not worth thinking about, I can’t see into anyone else’s conscience. It doesn’t matter who those four perpetrators really are, just like it doesn’t matter what Natálie’s father was supposed to have done jail time for. Nothing gives anyone the right to take up a Molotov cocktail and try to murder an entire family with it. That is what this trial is about – and many people, including Mr Hájek, don’t get it.