Thirtieth anniversary of the Czech courts failing to call the neo-Nazi murder of Romani man Tibor Berki racist, Romani people said the justice system failed them

The 42-year-old father of five died of a brain hemorrhage after being transported to hospital. Three perpetrators were arrested the following day and a fourth voluntarily surrendered himself to police.

Important events were underway elsewhere in the country on 13 May 1995. In Lety u Písku, in the presence of Czech President Havel, a monument was unveiled to the Romani prisoners of the local concentration camp during the Second World War who were murdered by the racist hatred and violence involved with that conflict. On that occasion, Havel pointed out (not for the first time) that the fate of Holocaust victims remains a permanent warning to us today.

“If we do not confront the evil of racism in the moment of its seemingly innocent, initial manifestations, it will grow into a phenomenon that is really serious, dangerous, threatening to the whole society, and we risk being unable to counter such evil later on, or only being able to face it at the cost of more human sacrifice… Even today we sometimes hear calls for ‘Gypsies to the gas chambers’. Even today we can observe indifference to such speech, the silent support of those shouting such words, audiences of cowards, and the renewed separation of people according to their ethnic origin. All of this must be opposed again and again because this is the proven background of racism,” Havel said in 1995.

The thug beat the Romani man to death in front of his children

In Žďár nad Sázavou that night, events transpired which were directly related to the unveiling of the Lety monument and Havel’s words. Four neo-Nazis broke into the Berki home and murdered Mr. Berki, father of five.

The crime was committed at about 23:00. Four racists (aged 17 to 21) broke into the dwelling and started demolishing the furniture and interior equipment with a baseball bat and an axe they found.

Homeowner Tibor Berki did his best to defend himself and his family from the thugs. One of the assailants then repeatedly struck him on the back of the head and elsewhere on his head with the baseball bat.

Mr. Berki was transported to hospital and died there of a brain hemorrhage. He was beaten to death in front of his family members, including his children.

“The one swinging the baseball bat also tried to hit me, but I ducked, so he just got me on the shoulder. I started shouting for help through the window. Luckily our neighbor across the way immediately called the police and ambulance. If I hadn’t shouted for help, they might have even killed our children,” Mr. Berki’s wife Anna described the scene at the time.

“Father started defending himself with his bare hands, but he had no chance. It all lasted about five minutes. The other one, who didn’t have a baseball bat, grabbed an axe with an iron handle from the kitchen and started smashing up the appliances. He slashed at everything like a madman until splinters flew. He swung at me too, but I ducked. Then he went at my father,” Mr. Berki’s son Jaroslav described the fateful incident at the time.

“We’re gonna get the Gypsies”

The ethnicity of the family (Hungarian Roma) was decisive for the perpetrators. The assailants, who did not know the Berkis personally, were spotted in a pub before perpetrating their crime, where they were agreeing on how to “go get some Gypsies”.

At the time, unlike their coverage of previous racist cases, the Czech media stressed that according to their neighbors, the police, the regional prosecutor, and representatives of the town, the Berkis were a decent family and Mr. Berki took care of them, held a job (in a bakery), and had no criminal record.

Benevolence toward the perpetrators

At the time, Czech society treated the perpetrators of crimes motivated by racism more or less benevolently and the approach of the judiciary, the police, and politicians to previous crimes motivated by racism was very lax. That was also reflected in the courts’ decisions in this case, although as a consequence of Mr. Berki’s murder, lawmakers and ministers made some minor improvements.

“Judges, prosecutors, and police are informing us that the skinheads are from ‘good families’ and that this was just a childish game. However, if a Romani boy steals something, he is not considered a child from a ‘good family’,” Jana Chalupová, head of the Department of Public Relations at the Office of the President of the Republic, commented at the time.

A matter of Czech democracy

“The death of Berki, whose brain was beaten out of his head by skinheads in front of his own children, concerns Czech democracy. If anybody believes this example is too strong, imagine if ‘white’ people were in the minority and the baseball bats were cracking non-gypsy heads,” Ivan Gabal, a sociologist, said of the whole event at the time.

The Government’s Report on the State of Human Rights in the Czech Republic for 1995 described the situation as follows: “In the Czech Republic, Romani people are not yet being protected from the violent acts of racism and discrimination which have obviously been on the rise in recent years, resulting in deaths and grave, lifelong injuries to their victims. The commitment to protect the members of minorities from racial violence is not being fulfilled, not by the repressive units and not through prevention, whether that be related to security or education. The state has a tendency not to react until there are acts of racist violence, and then it usually reacts through verbal pronouncements and judicially, not through active political prevention.”

Epilogue: They said this murder wasn’t racist

Zdeněk Podrázský (21) was charged with the crimes of murder, trespassing, and violence against a group. Martin Komár (17) and Jan Nevole (17) were charged with trespassing and violence against a group.

Jan Vosmech (17) voluntarily surrendered to police several days later. Komár and Podrázský were remanded into custody.

The prosecutor sought the highest possible punishment for such crimes committed with racist motivation. Despite that, the first-instance court decided that racial motivation could not be proven in this case, as the perpetrators had not shouted any derogatory racist slogans during the attack itself.

The Regional Court in Brno sentenced Podrázský on 13 December 1995 to 12 years in a maximum-security prison and ordered him to pay CZK 22,876 [EUR 920] to the victims’ health insurer. Komár was sentenced to 18 months in prison with supervision, Nevole to six months, and Vosmech to two months, with the latter two sentences suspended for one year.

The prosecutor appealed and on 23 May 1996, the High Court in Olomouc sentenced Podrázský to 13 years in maximum-security prison, Komár to 40 months in a prison with supervision, and left the rest of the sentences intact. Judge Ivo Kouřil said in his verdict that it was not possible for perpetrators to have assaulted the Berki family on the basis of their nationality and race because the Roma are from the same Indo-European “race” as Czech people are.

Disappointment over the verdict, Romani people criticize the courts

Human rights activists and Romani activists were outraged by the courts’ decisions and made no secret of their concerns that such a verdict was a dangerous precedent. Ondřej Giňa, a former staffer of the Office of the Government who worked on the nationalities agenda, said it best: “The court ruled that this was not a racially-motivated murder. If the court is unable to prove the racial motivation in such a brutal case, then in normal cases where someone is assaulted on the street by a skinhead, the attacker can expect to be convicted of mere assault at the most.“

Ministers and the President condemned the murder of Mr. Berki. The Government proposed tightening punishments for violent crimes motivated by racism and gave the impetus to setting up a new police division on extremism.

The Romani Civic Initiative (Romská občanská iniciativa – ROI) welcomed this decision by the ministers to more vigorously combat racially-motivated crime and along with other Romani organizations proposed setting up civil society monitoring over its fulfillment. “We welcome this decision even though it has come late, but of course it would be worse if it never came at all, if the Government and others behaved the way they have behaved for the last four or five years, according to the motto ‘This has nothing to do with us, this isn’t happening in our country’,” said the chair of the ROI, Emil Ščuka.

Giňa was also critical, saying that “[Czech President] Klaus ignored previous cases and did not speak up until after Berki was beaten to death. As a result, several legislative measures were adopted, but those were just about an attempt to improve the work of the police, the courts, and the prosecutors. The state has not made any effort to generally review this problem, but has focused just on institutions and their work. Nothing changes until somebody else dies. However, there are so many problems which are being completely ignored. Police and society overall remain passive.”