Racists on Czech social media call for the murder of Romani people, NGOs file crime reports

The reports were submitted to the Police Presidium between 13 July and 9 August 2023. “Hate speech against the Romani community is still quite widespread on social media. Frequently, the authors of this hate speech believe they are untouchable. However, judging from past cases, we know the Czech Police will find these people and prosecute them. We hope that thanks to this effort, social media will become a safer space for everybody, the Romani minority included,” Alexandra Dubová, a lawyer with the Forum for Human Rights, said of the filings.

According to the organizations, the online remarks violate Section 355 of the Criminal Code (defamation of an ethnic, national, racial or other group), Section 356 (incitement to hate a group) and Section 364 (incitement to criminal behavior). The reports submitted to the police reference several such hate-filled comments posted to social media.

“This is about comments online that especially promote genocide against the Roma, that call for racial war, that celebrate the murder of Romani people in the concentration camp at Lety u Písku, or that praise the actions of the two neo-Nazis whose attack in 2009 caused a two-year-old Romani girl severe burn injuries,” said Štefan Balog, who was in charge of the group of volunteers at ROMEA that has been monitoring such hate speech on social media. The chair of the ERRC, Đorđe Jovanović, said the project was developed because “We have a zero-tolerance approach to hate speech.” 

“Hate speech, whether it is used online or offline, frequently leads to real-world violence for Romani communities. We have compiled evidence of the devastating impact of online hate speech on Romani lives, especially when it is exploited by far-right groups. Since online hate speech transcends national borders, we must have a coordinated response to monitor and report online hate speech, to create counter-narratives, and to gather evidence for legal actions. Criminal complaints such as these warn others, remind us of this problem, and reinforce the law which says that such behaviour is unacceptable and has severe consequences,” said the ERRC chair.

The evidence supporting these legal steps was gathered by Romani youth who volunteered as part of this ERRC project together with news portal Romea.cz in the Czech Republic as part of the Challenging Digital Antigypsyism project. The aim of this project, which is financially supported by EVZ, is to draw attention to hate speech on the Internet through activities undertaken by volunteers and also to take legal steps which will directly address hate speech online.

The previous seven crime reports filed by the organizations in October 2022 and in March 2023 are being investigated by police; two perpetrators have already been punished in both criminal and misdemeanor proceedings. The ERRC and the Forum for Human Rights will carefully follow the next moves of the police with regard to all the crime reports filed, and the project will also continue to look for other avenues, both legal ones and non-legal ones, to ensure antigypsyism is effectively eliminated from the Internet.

Growth in hateful comments after the Vítkov arsonists were granted early release

The volunteers recorded a rise in the number of hateful comments in May 2023 after the neo-Nazis who perpetrated the Vítkov arson were paroled. Two of the neo-Nazis responsible for the Molotov cocktail attack on a Romani family in the town of Vítkov in the Opava area in 2009 were paroled after serving two-thirds of their sentences.

That attack harmed three people including the minor Natália Kudriková, who suffered serious burns. The arsonists’ defense today is that they were naive young men back then.

The decision to parole the arsonists shocked both the Czech Government Commissioner for Roma Minority Affairs and the family and supporters of the victims. The mother of Natália Kudriková expressed her disgust over the decision and fear for her daughter’s safety.

That attack was part of the wider growth in anti-Romani, fatal violence organized by neo-Nazi groups in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia between 2008 and 2010. The ERRC recorded 48 attacks on the lives and property of Romani people in Hungary during those two years resulting in nine fatalities, two of whom were minors.

In the Czech Republic, 17 anti-Romani attacks during those two years caused harm to 11 persons, two of whom were children, and two of the victims suffered life-threatening injuries. In Slovakia, 10 attacks over those same two years took the lives of two Romani people and injured eight, including two minors.

The ERRC also monitored the responses of the state to the 44 most brutal anti-Romani attacks reported to police in those three countries. The organization ascertained that the verdicts in the arson case in Vítkov, which resulted in sentences of 20 and 22 years, “was far from a standard response to anti-Romani violence in the Czech Republic”.