Czech Republic: Local officials circulate photos, allegedly of Romani corpses, with racist remarks

News server iHNED.cz reports that officials working at the town hall in Lovosice have been circulating an e-mail among themselves that includes photographs of burned bodies. The subject of the email is “How Gypsies in Ústí Region stole a cable.”

František Budský, the head of the Environmental Department at the Lovosice town hall, reportedly sent the e-mail on 31 January 2012 to his colleagues. The message included photographs of burned human bodies lying under fallen electric lines. Budský now claims he may have received the e-mail with the photographs but that he did not forward it to anyone. “I don’t know who sent it to me, I erased it immediately, it wasn’t important,” he told iHNED.cz, adding that he would not comment on how it was possible that the e-mail was sent from his address to another three managerial officials of the town.

Petr Soldon, the director of the Construction Authority and a member of the town’s Commission for Education and Sport, added this commentary to the e-mail: “At least one positive piece of news”. He then forwarded the e-mail to more than 20 other e-mail addresses.

Even though the photos with the racist commentaries were sent from the official e-mail addresses of bureaucrats at the Lovosice town hall, the town leadership claims to have known nothing about it. Yesterday afternoon town representatives called the incident “unfortunate”.

“This does happen in the bureaucracy, you know how it goes,” Radim Tuček, the town hall’s media representative, said. He confirmed that the message with the racist subject header had been circulated among the staff. “The council secretary spoke with the bureaucrats concerned, it won’t happen again. The town hall will not take any further action. No one here was the author of the e-mail or its subject header,” he added.

Mayor Lenka Lízlová did not speak with the bureaucrats involved, but told iHNED.cz that “under no circumstances was this intentionally racially motivated, as was so unfortunately reported in the article on iHNED.cz. If it could be proven that one of the employees has a tendency to incite any kind of intolerance or similar matters the town leadership is prepared to take the appropriate measures with respect to such behavior.” She added that she would take steps to restrict such behavior in future.