Petition demands Czech President resign and SPD party be dissolved for supporting racism

A former Czechoslovak soldier and member of the Romani community now living in Great Britain, Štefan Pongo, has initiated an online petition calling for the dissolution of the "Freedom and Direct Democracy" party of Tomio Okamura (the SPD) and the resignation of Czech President Miloš Zeman. For now more than 100 people have signed on to it and other signatures are being added continually.

"We Romani people who are citizens of the Czech Republic are calling on all international groups to pressure the Czech Government to uphold all of the post-war international conventions on eliminating all forms of racial discrimination," the petition reads. Pongo, who emigrated to Great Britain in 2006, told news server Romea.cz that "This petition is not directed just against the SPD of Tomio Okamura and his scoffers who are publicly espousing the genocide of a population and dishonoring the Romani Holocaust, but it is also against the current head of state, Miloš Zeman, as more than once, through his remarks, he has violated such an international convention and he is constantly inciting people to hatred and dividing the thinking of the nation as a whole."

Pongo is a graduate of a military secondary school in Martin, Slovakia. "After completing active duty I had no success in applying myself after 1993 [i.e., the division of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia - editors]. I was rejected everywhere after being interviewed in person. I had to make a living importing second-hand cars from abroad," Pongo said when asked why he left the Czech Republic.

"When the teacher at the primary school my oldest son was attending informed me that while my son is highly intelligent he unfortunately has little likelihood of applying himself here I didn't wait, I took the children to Great Britain," said Pongo, who became a truck driver there and has been one ever since. "I do not regret moving today. My son graduated from the University of Huddersfield and recently joined a leading firm as an analytic software tester. My other son is in his last year of Human Resources studies at the University of Salford, and my daughter is studying at the College in Bury - psychology, English literature, and dramaturgy. Moreover, she has been a Royal Air Force cadet for 18 months."