Slovak neo-Nazi and MP Milan Mazurek prosecuted for racist remarks about Roma

Slovak media report that police officers from the National Criminal Agency (NAKA) in Slovakia have begun criminal proceedings against Slovak MP Milan Mazurek (Kotleba-ĽSNS) over his abusive remarks about Romani people made during an interview with the Frontinus radio station in Žilina. Mazurek is accused of making generalizing remarks about all Romani people which the moderator also did nothing to correct.

“In January of this year, a detective from NAKA began the criminal proceedings in the matter of defaming, inciting hatred against and threatening persons because of their ethnicity, nationality, origin or skin color,” Michal Slivka, spokesperson for the Police Presidium, told television station TA3. Local police in Žilina first investigated the remarks.

NAKA took over the case at the beginning of 2017. “We don’t need to pour EUR 300 million for seven or eight years into just one community, to build playgrounds in the gypsy settlements so they can break the equipment, to build preschools so they can destroy them, we don’t need to teach them to dance or to use a computer, we need to put them to work,” Mazurek said during the interview.

“EUR 150 million will be used just for houses in those gypsy settlements, for people who have made no contributions to our culture, to our nation, or to our state budget – exactly the opposite, they have decided to live an asocial lifestyle and have sucked our social welfare system dry, ” the MP from the fascist ĽSNS party alleged. News server Aktuality.sk reported that the radio staion that broadcast the interview with Mazurek has a problem now also.

According to the Broadcasting Council, the station did not make sure the political journalism program it broadcast was objective. “Also, the station may have violated the ban on either covertly or openly disparaging, inciting hatred against, or vilifying people on the basis of their ethnicity, their faith and religion, or their nationality,” the Broadcasting Council said in its official standpoint on the matter.