Racially-motivated attack by football fans on African man on a tram in the Czech capital - nobody came to his aid
News server Aktuálně.cz reports that a group of fans of the Sigma Olomouc football club assaulted a man from western Africa on Saturday, 4 November as they were riding on a tram in Prague. The victim ended up in the hospital.
Police arrested several of the attackers that same day and is investigating them on suspicion of committing felony defamation of a nation, race, ethnic or other group of persons, felony rioting and felony battery. The fans, who had come to Prague for the match between Sigma and Bohemians 1905, got onto tram number 6 at the I. P. Pavlova stop and began to first verbally assault the 36-year-old man, who has long lived in Prague, before attacking him physically.
“At I.P. Pavlova about 20 young men got on and immediately began to shout at me that I’m a ‘black mug’ and a ‘dirty nigger’. They also shouted that I should go back to Africa and that Blacks and Jews should be sent to the gas chambers,” the victim told news server Aktuálně.cz.
The football fans are said to have thrown lemons at the man, to have punched him, and then to have dragged him from his seat and kicked him. Nobody else on the tram, including the driver, did anything to stand up for him.
After the fans exited at the Bohemians Stadium, the victim told Aktuálně.cz that he attempted to call the police: “I wanted to call police and an ambulance, but my phone was destroyed. When the tram took off, I pressed the emergency button. The driver was amazed, but she had to have seen them assaulting me. When I asked her to call the police and an ambulance, she asked why.”
Thanks to the professional work of the police, several of the assailants were arrested during the match after the victim identified them on CCTV recordings from the stadium. He has lived in Prague for 10 yars and speaks Czech and six other languages, including Vietnamese.
The victim has earned a doctorate from a university in Prague and works as a computer programmer for a multinational firm. “All this time I have done my best to join this society, for two years I taught French as a volunteer to children at a preschool,” he told Aktualně.cz.
“Now I have the feeling none of that mattered. I am also disappointed that nobody came to my aid – most of the people on the tram whom I asked to give testimony as eyewitnesses refused to do so,” he said.
