Czech tram driver, fired after xenophobic assault on Ukrainian passengers, has history of anti-Roma, extremist involvement

The DPP said the driver had violated both their own internal rules and several laws and announced his firing on the X social media site. Police are also still investigating video footage of the incident that was posted online on Thursday, 27 February.

The Czech Government Human Rights Commissioner said the incident was a bias crime. The driver on tram line 7 can be seen in the video footage shouting at a couple of elderly passengers who are Ukrainian and who have a small child in tow.

Using coarse language and addressing them impolitely, the driver tells the elderly man to leave the tram, yelling, among other things “You have no right to be in this country!” The driver even quickly extends his hand toward the elderly male passenger’s face, although it is unclear from the footage whether he then actually hit him.

The child’s father has commented on the video footage, which has gone viral on social media. According to news server Novinky.cz, the child’s grandfather and grandmother were accompanying their grandson.

“My parents were bringing my child home and the driver didn’t like the fact that he was standing up with his feet on the seat and looking out of the window, even though my father showed him that his shoes were clean and immediately took my child into his arms,” the child’s father told the Vinegrate.cz news server, which focuses on information for Ukrainians living in the Czech Republic. The father also said that the family had not yet filed a complaint with police, but do plan to do so.

The tram driver commented on the incident in a short social media post in which he tried to defend his behavior. He alleged that the video captures just part of the situation and does not include the alleged “provocation” by the passengers.

“If only the whole video had been shown from the start, including during the ride when the passengers made a mess and their child happily jumped on the seat in his dirty shoes,” the driver posted. He claimed to have done his best to first calmly communicate with the passengers about the situation, but allegedly encountered aggression from them.

“The fact that the gentleman repeatedly cursed and spit at me is not in that video, understandably,” the driver alleged. Furthermore, he claimed to have repeatedly called on the passengers to leave the tram, to no avail.

“Yes, if somebody tells me ‘Die, you Czech f&*(er’, then one really does explode,” the driver explained his behavior. However, he soon deleted those comments.

Mayor Svoboda called the video footage shocking. “To see an employee of the Transit Authority throwing passengers off of a tram with xenophobic remarks and subsequently physically assaulting one is shocking in and of itself,” Svoboda posted to the X social media site.

According to the mayor, such behavior is not just inappropriate on public transit, but in polite society. “I expect the Transit Authority will thoroughly investigate the situation and draw the necessary conclusions from it. Public transit must be safe and accessible to all irrespective of nationality or origin,” Svoboda said.

The incident is also being investigated by Deputy Mayor for Transport Zdeněk Hřib (Pirates). “Whatever preceded this situation, such behavior is completely unacceptable, especially in front of a young child,” the deputy mayor said.

Hřib said he was addressing the situation together with the DPP, including the most rapid possible taking of steps under labor law. DPP spokesperson Aneta Řehková confirmed that.

“We immediately internally investigated this case. The way in which this driver approached the operational situation totally violates not just the DPP’s internal rules, but also the laws of the Czech Republic and good morals,” the spokesperson said.

According to Řehková, the DPP was taking advantage of all opportunities to resolve the case at the level of labor law. At the same time, the DPP is filing a motion to the public prosecutor on suspicion of the commission of a crime or misdemeanor, she said.

The case was also investigated by the Prague Police, who have been ascertaining its circumstances so as to decide on how to categorize what the driver did. “At this moment, we are inclined to see this as having been a misdemeanor against civil coexistence,” police posted to the X social media site.

Czech Interior Minister Vít Rakušan (Mayors and Independent – STAN) said that irrespective of what preceded the incident, the aggression by the driver was no way to deal with it, to say nothing of the driver’s argumentation about the passengers’ nationality. Rakušan also pointed out the passivity of the other passengers on the tram.

“If you end up in such a situation and you do not want to interfere, or you are unable to interfere on your own, please call the free emergency number for the Police of the Czech Republic,” the minister urged the public [for non-Czech speakers, this number is 112]. The Czech Government Human Rights Commissioner Klára Šimáčková Laurenčíková called the incident an obviously prejudiced crime.

Šimáčková Laurenčíková posted to social media that she is contact with the Embassy of Ukraine, the Interior Ministry, and local representatives of the Ukrainian national minority over the incident.

Tram driver linked to anti-Roma extremists and the far right

Shortly after the video went viral, Czech-language social media users began to look for information on the driver’s identity. He turns out to have past ties to an extremist, neo-Nazi organization that has been creating hatred of Romani people, too.

In 2010, the driver was linked to the ultra-right Workers’ Youth movement and to the extremist scene in Chomutov, according to news server Denik.cz. Back then he was the administrator of a fan website about local mass transit that linked to nationalist web pages.

Because there was a link to the fan website from the official website of the Chomutov Municipal Transport Authority, people could reach anti-Roma texts and neo-Nazi propaganda from that official website in just a few clicks. After media warned of this association, the link was deleted, but the man’s relationship with the ultra-right persisted.

Several years later, the man turned up on the candidate list of “National Democracy“, a party renowned for its ultra-nationalist, xenophobic positions. That party regularly turns up in the extremism reports written by the Interior Ministry.

Bias crime in the Czech Republic targeting Ukrainians is growing rapidly

The case of the tram driver is part of the wider context of the growth in anti-Ukrainian bias crime in the Czech Republic. The In IUSTITIA organization states in a new report that since the full-fledged invasion by Russia of Ukraine in 2022, the number of prejudiced attacks on Ukrainians has increased sixfold there.

These incidents today are among the most frequent forms of hate crime in the country. The most frequent incidents of anti-Ukrainian crime are verbal attacks and threats, followed by physical aggression, and an actual physical assault happens in 41 % of cases.

In IUSTITIA is warning that many victims fear reporting these attacks to the authorities, partially because they have no faith in institutions, and partially because of language barriers. The director of the In IUSTITIA organization, Klára Kalibová, is appealing to the Czech authorities to take bias crime seriously.

“Our report confirms that hateful attacks on the Ukrainian and the Russian communities are not isolated incidents, but part of a wider problem. The Czech state must strengthen protections for such victims, improve institutional responses and provide enough financing to organizations working with such victims,” Kalibová said.

The report recommends improving the prevention of such crimes, increasing the legal and social aid for victims, and systematically educating bureaucrats and police on how to recognize such crimes.