Czech Neo-Nazi Marches Target Roma
There has been a surge in Czech neo-Nazi activity this year, with marches and demonstrations held in towns and cities across the country. DW looks at what effect this movement is having in the Czech Republic.
“The marches are on the increase. They’re on the increase, and people are afraid.”
David Tiser is a young Roma professional. Educated and erudite, he is the director of a Prague NGO and a member of the government’s council on the Roma minority. Nursing espressos in the courtyard of Prague’s Aero art house cinema, it feels a long way from the housing estates of Plzen, Ceske Budejovice and Ostrava, turned into virtual war zones in recent weeks as riot police fired volleys of stun grenades to disperse crowds of rampaging far-right extremists.
“I must correct you - if you’ll allow me,” Tiser told DW.
“These are not just marches by extremists. Regular citizens are joining in as well. And this is what is dangerous. This is why the foreign media are interested. This is why you are talking to me today.”
Cowering in fear
Last Saturday more than 1,500 people - mostly, but not only, as David points out, far-right skinheads - marched angrily through half a dozen Czech towns and cities. In some locations, the demonstrations passed off peacefully. In others - like Ostrava - mobs of skinheads were only prevented from carrying out what Jews in Tsarist Russia would have called a pogrom by a huge police presence.
A total of 62 people were arrested in Ostrava alone. A police spokeswoman said more than two dozen officers were injured, and police confiscated wooden stakes, baseball bats and machetes.
David Tiser says often the media focuses on the cost of the police operation and the civic inconvenience as city centers are locked down. But what’s hard to enumerate is the psychological stress and fear among the local Roma community, cowering in their council flats as the marchers shout “gypsies to the gas chambers.”
“It’s not just that they can’t leave their houses. There’s an element of psychological terror too, especially for the children,” David Tiser told DW.