Czech Supreme Administrative Court says 2019 dispersal of neo-Nazi march in Brno was illegal
The Czech Supreme Administrative Court has decided that the dispersal in 2019 of a march on 1 May by the "National and Social Front" (NSF) in Brno, a radical group, was illegal. The case brought by right-wing extremists against Petr Štika, the secretary at the Brno-střed Municipal Department, has therefore been definitively ended.
Štika dissolved the march in the Nový sady neighborhood before those participating in it could complete their planned route. The court has found that those participating in the assembly had been proceeding in accordance with the law.
Czech Television reported the court’s decision after it was posted to the official notice board. The Regional Court had ruled in September 2021 in favor of those participating in the march; the local authority filed a cassation complaint against that ruling, which has now failed.
The march started on Zelný trh and was supposed to end on Mendlovo náměstí, a little more than a kilometer away. Štika called on the organizers to change the route because it was being blocked by a group of counter-protesters that was more numerous.
According to the local authority, because the organizers refused to change their route, local officials dissolved the assembly and ordered the marchers to disperse. The court, however, found that according to video evidence, the march organizers documented that they did agree to take an alternate route and adjusted the march’s position according to an agreement reached with officials.
The neo-Nazis lit their torches and planned to continue the march. The secretary then warned them for a second time that the assembly had been dispersed and that they should put out their torches.
The police reiterated that call, so the neo-Nazis then obediently doused out their torches in a bucket of water that was brought to them. They then began to take off the white t-shirts the organizers had handed out to them and left the scene of the assembly to the applause and mockery of hundreds of people.
According to a statement about the NSF assembly and the procession made at the time by the In IUSTITIA organization, the municipality ignored instances of the marchers breaking the law on public assembly and should not have done so. “The slogan ‘A Jew-ocracy is rotting in our state’, expressed by the leader of the NSF at today’s demonstration in Brno, is illegal and is sufficient grounds to disperse the demo on the spot,” In IUSTITIA said at the time.
The torchlight march was convened in May 2019 by the “National and Social Front” (NSF), a neo-Nazi group. Activists formerly from the Workers’ Youth and informal neo-Nazi groups came together under that name.
The NSF was known to be distinctly oriented toward the international movement and drew inspiration from neo-Nazis in other European countries. Members of the Czech NSF attended the “Independence March” in Warsaw, Poland in November 2018, for example, and maintained friendly relations with colleagues in Germany and even in Italy.
The 1 May event in Brno was supervised by hundreds of police officers. Those opposed to the NSF march assembled at 17:00 on Dominikánské náměstí, while the neo-Nazis assembled at 19:00 on Zelný trh, less than 300 meters away from the counter-protesters.
Those opposing the NSF march officially ended their event just before 20:00, but most left it to continue blocking the NSF march. After the radicals were dispersed, their opponents celebrated, marching through the city center themselves before also dispersing.
in Brno, Czech Republic, 1 May 2019. (PHOTO: Jiří Sláma)
