Czech politician tweets racist allegations about "gyppos", then apologizes and deletes it
Radim Ivan, a Czech politician with the nationally-governing Civic Democratic Party (ODS) who is vice-mayor of the municipal department Ostrava-Jih has posted insults on Twitter targeting Romani people. He later deleted the tweet and apologized.
In the post, which the politician published just after 22:30 on 18 November, he refers to Romani people as “gyppos” (cigoše) and alleges they encourage their newly-adult children to apply for unemployment. “The welfare office in Havířov is announcing: Fathers used to bring their sons to the mines when they turned 18, but today the gyppos bring their kid to the Labor Office to apply for welfare,” he posted.
The politician later deleted the post. “Many discussants criticized him beneath that tweet, so that is probably why he erased it,” said a reader of Romea.cz who brought the vice-mayor’s remarks to the attention of the news server.
Ivan is now saying this remark was not “his”, but that he was just sharing the opinion of a friend who works for that branch of the Labor Office. “I shared the comment of a friend of mine who works at that particular workplace, I left it in the original wording, that is why I wrote ‘The welfare office in Havířov is announcing…’,” he explained to Romea.cz.
“This was somebody else’s experience, but later I realized it was not correct and I deleted it. I apologize to the Romani community for calling them ‘cigoši‘ (although I did not choose that term),” Ivan said.
In May of this year the vice-mayor shared a similar post. That message did not say anything about the nationality of those drawing welfare.
“The welfare office in Havířov is announcing: Here it is the regular standard that lifelong welfare recipients bring their 18-year-old sons to start drawing welfare too. A family tradition, from father to son. Forever and ever. This simply isn’t working,” the ODS politician posted on 18 May 2022.
Ivan led the nationally-governing SPOLU coalition’s candidate list during the recent local elections, coming in third place in Ostrava-Jih. ANO won the local contest, with the “Freedom and Direct Democracy” (SPD) movement coming in second place.
ANO and SPOLU then created a local coalition to govern the municipal department, so Ivan became vice-mayor. He is tasked with the agendas of child protection services, crime prevention, physical education and the schools, and strategic development.
