Czech court orders director of housing corporation to apologize to Romani community member for abusive remarks

Yesterday the District Court in Most, Czech Republic brought to an end the scandal of the abusive and insulting remarks made by the director of the Krušnohor company, František Ryba, about Romani community member Iveta Theuserová of Most. Ryba was interviewed by a Czech weekly magazine in the runup to local elections as part of their investigative reporting mapping the activities of the housing corporation that he manages and its controversial involvement during the local campaign with a party whose materials referred to some residents as “riff-raff”, and he was quoted by the magazine as saying the following about Theuserová: “That lying cikánka? Do you mean the cikánka with the IQ of bubbling mud?”    

Theuserová was insulted by the remarks and filed a lawsuit against Ryba for protection of her good name. The court has now ruled completely in her favor and ordered Ryba to publish an apology in that same weekly. 

Ryba also must now pay CZK 50 000 [EUR 1 900] compensation to Theuserová for slandering her and cover the costs of her bringing the matter to court. “I am satisfied with the verdict because the court fully agreed with my claims. This brings to an end two years of effort and suffering, because I was never interested in such publicity,” Theuserová told news server Romea.cz.    

The details and justification will be communicated to both parties by the court in its written verdict, which they will receive within one month. Once it is delivered, they will have 15 days to appeal. 

The Krušnohor building cooperative is infamously notorious for its bold connections with a local political movement, “Association of Mosters for Most” (Sdružení Mostečané Mostu) which said the removal of residents it labeled “problematic” into a “village for the riff-raff” was part of its local election program. During the most recent local race the movement scored a broad success and won eight seats on the local assembly.  

Theuserová is an educated specialist in the field of social education and social services administration and currently does social work with patients at the Bohnice Psychiatric Hospital in Prague. She is a volunteer civil society member of the Czech Government Council on Romani Community Affairs.