Czech MP and educator "understands" why some are calling for murder of first-graders

Speaking with the daily Týdeník Směr, Czech MP Tereza Hyťhová (Freedom and Direct Democracy – SPD), who is a pedagogue, has expressed understanding for the people who have posted death threats and other hateful commentaries recently to social networking sites beneath a photograph of a first grade class from the Prosetice quarter of Teplice. The children photographed are mostly of Arab, Romani or Vietnamese origin.

The Czech Police are already investigating the hateful commentaries. “When we see a photograph like that, I understand the innuendo of the people who are bothered by it,” the newly-elected MP said.

“I know Prosetice, because I am from Teplice. I basically know what kind of locality that is. The reporter [from Týdeník Směr, who was responding to the scandal] said some innuendo was turning up about the photo and asked if that’s what it’s [ethnic composition] is like. I told him that I understand those people. I didn’t say that I back them, because I absolutely do not identify with that. I do understand them, though, because today the social system is set up so that welfare is being abused exactly by such people who do not go to work and who do not even properly attend school,” the MP said in an interview for news server Lidovky.cz.

“What I meant was that if this [reaction] was about those excluded localities, then I understand people are bothered by it. However, this is not about those specific children. I don’t know the children in that photograph. I don’t have anything against minorities, but if there is something that bothers people, it’s welfare abuse. There’s a housing estate in Prosetice, I know it there. That’s how it might have been intended, but I do not identify with those comments because I am not an extremist,” she argued.

The MP from Krupka is also the youngest Regional Assembly member in the Czech Republic and is already infamous for previous controversial remarks. Recently she garnered publicity for a motion to close the Asylum Center for Integration in the Předlice quarter of Ústí nad Labem.

Hyťhová said she considers the center a security risk to local residents. Marcela Prokůpková, the director of the school in Teplice that has been coping with this wave of hateful messages targeting its children and educators, said she has been following Hyťhová’s political career for some time:  “Prior to the [lower house] elections, as a candidate for Parliament and as a Regional Assembly member for the Ústecký Region, she answered several questions from journalists. I made sure to keep one article where she says she will abolish inclusion and Islam.”