Czech mayor who voiced racist insults against Romani people also lied about ordering the recording of a local assembly meeting to be erased
The Czech daily Deník N has reported that Jaroslav Červinka, the Mayor of Poděbrady, has admitted he ordered the erasure of an audio recording of a local assembly meeting at the point where he expressed racist views against Romani people. Back in July the mayor insisted to that same paper that he knew nothing about the adjustment to the recording.
During a June session of the local assembly, the mayor had reminisced about having been reprimanded by the district authority 20 years ago. He said that in 2001 he had been involved in a traffic accident, describing it as having been caused by dogs allegedly owned by a Romani resident, and said he was reprimanded for remarks he made to the police who responded.
“… I then said my memorable sentence that it would be better to shoot them. The cop told me that they should not be shot, that the dogs could not help themselves, and I said I didn’t mean it was the dogs who should be shot,” he recounted.
When explaining himself later to the police at that time, Červinka rejected the idea that he had racist tendencies or that he wanted to shoot Romani people. The incriminating section of the audio recording from the June 2022 local assembly session, which is published on the town website, is missing because somebody erased it.
A full recording, however, was posted by somebody to Twitter. Červinka claimed to have nothing to do with the adjusted recording.
“Our IT guys edit that. I don’t interfere with it at all, so I don’t know. I’ll ask tomorrow when I’m in the office,” Červinka told Deník N in July.
At the most recent local assembly session on 14 September, however, the mayor admitted that he had directly instructed the technicians to erase that part of the audio recording. “I ordered that because I realized that remark wasn’t absolutely appropriate, so I ordered it,” Červinka said.
In the wake of the incident, the “Mayors and Independents” (STAN) movement decided to remove Červinka from its local candidate list ahead of last month’s elections. He and all the others on the candidate list eventually withdrew and ran together as the “Association of Independent Candidates Poděbrady” (Sdružení Nezávislí kandidáti Poděbrady).
That independent list won seven seats on the local assembly and thereby the elections. The Czech Police believe his remarks rose to the level of a felony, but Červinka wants to continue in the town leadership.
