Czech Police investigating verbal attack on Romani journalist, Romea.cz has identified the aggressor
Czech Police have begun investigating the racist attack on Czech Television reporter and ROMEA TV correspondent Richard Samko. A participant in the demonstration against public broadcaster Czech Television in Prague abused Samko by calling him a "gypsy bastard".
News server Romea.cz has identified the aggressor. “Detectives have already begun investigating the matter of this verbal assault on a Czech Television reporter,” the Czech Police announced on Twitter.
Samko has confirmed to Romea.cz that he is in contact with police. He experienced the racist insults while covering the protest on Thursday, 17 November convened by Ladislav Vrabel against Czech Television and the Government in Prague.
Several thousand people attended the event, the aim of which was to demonstrate for “enabling appearances on Czech TV broadcasts”. A man who has since been identified by Romea.cz was captured on video shouting at Samko: “Hey, there’s that bastard, dude, the gypsy one, dude. You’re here with us today, yeah?”
The person is a businessman from the Ústecký Region who ran for the “Freedom and Direct Democracy” (SPD) movement led by Czech MP Tomio Okamura in this year’s local elections. He threatened Samko, rhetorically asking him what he would do “in five years here, when it will be a totally different time?”
According to attorney Klára Kalibová from the In IUSTITIA organization, the behavior caught on camera could amount to a misdemeanor against civil coexistence. “It could be an offense under Act No. 251/2016 Coll., on certain offenses, under section 7, paragraph 3, letter b, where the person concerned faces a fine of up to CZK 20,000 [EUR 820],” Klára Kalibová told Romea.cz.
Journalists express support for Samko
Samko’s fellow journalists have expressed support for him on social media. Jana Ustohalová of the daily Deník N called the racist attack on him absolutely unacceptable: “The community of journalists and of politicians should send the clear signal that the days of the 1990s, when Romani people were afraid to walk down the street, must not be allowed to return,” she wrote.
Czech Television’s Jakub Železný wrote: “Yesterday after the Czech Television news broadcast my colleague Richard Samko sent me a nice SMS. If I’d known then what had happened to him, I would’ve added this to the thanks I sent him: Dear Ríša, if you are a ‘gypsy bastard’ to that Fascist/Bolshevik bastard, then I’m one right along with you.”
Bohumil Vostál, the public broadcaster’s foreign correspondent in the USA, also stood up for Samko. “When I hear how that primitive shouts racist abuse with impunity and then repeats one insult after another at my brilliant colleague of many years, Richard Samko of Czech Television, I have to admit it makes me awfully angry. This is unacceptable, deplorable, the lowest of the low,” Vostál said on social media, while Czech Television’s Michal Kubal also shared his support on Twitter as #JeSuisRichard.
Aktuálně.cz reporter Radek Bartoníček also assaulted
Czech Police are also investigating an attack by protesters on the journalist Radek Bartoníček of news server Aktuálně.cz. They are trying to determine whether the behavior at issue was illegal.
Authorities announced their investigation on Twitter yesterday. Aktuálně.cz has published a video showing the events during the protest as well as a commentary by Bartoníček.
The reporter said he was mapping the events overall during the demonstration, interviewing people and filming the crowd. Some individuals attempted to drag him away from the front of the march, although he was not preventing anybody’s movement, he said.
“One of them knocked the mobile phone I use for filming out of my hand,” the reporter said. Aktuálně.cz’s management issued this statement: “The editors of our online daily object to these perceptions of media outlets and journalists playing a role as parties involved in conflicts or as representatives of any side of any dispute on which we are independently reporting.”
The organizer of the march and demonstration, Ladislav Vrabel, is facing bankruptcy, according to media reports, and has been organizing several anti-Government demonstrations in recent months. At the one held on 28 October, the state holiday marking Czechoslovak independence, police estimated turnout in the lower tens of thousands.
On the square where it was convened, petition stands were set up by the “Free People” (Svobodní) party and by aspiring presidential candidates Josef Skála (Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia – KSČM) and Alena Vitásková. After the demonstration, scuffles broke out in front of the National Museum between those for and against these positions, and some demonstrators clashed with police as well.
