Slovakia: Fascists have to apologize and pay damages to Romani politician for defamation
After almost four years, the Regional Court in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia has decided in favor of the vice-chair of the Progressive Slovakia movement, Irena Bihariová, who sued the Kotleba - ĽSNS (Kotleba's People's Party Our Slovakia) for spreading untrue information about her. According to the verdict, the party is required to apologize to the politician and pay her damages of EUR 5,000.
Biháriová issued a statement on the verdict saying it means truth has won out over disinformation and the ĽSNS has been convicted for “disseminating obvious lies about my person, which is a genuinely watershed verdict.” Fascist politicians from the ĽSNS used the party’s newspaper and its website in 2019 to repeatedly publish deceptive allegations about Slovak Education Minister Martina Lubyová allegedly awarding Biháriová’s non-governmental organization thousands in subsidies.
“In those articles, I was called a ‘gypsy fanatic’ who was ‘brainwashing children in the schools with a perverse agenda.’ Both of the pieces aimed to create a defamatory image of my person. It was not difficult to prove in court that these were absolute lies, the representatives of the ĽSNS just kept delaying the proceedings and burdening the courts with their new fabrications about my person,” Bihariová said.
The politician said it makes sense to defend oneself against disinformation because its influence becomes even more important in the runup to elections in particular. “These people and other fabricators of lies should understand that if they break the law, others are willing to undergo a long court process and bring them to trial. They will have to pay damages for what they have done. Now they know they can’t count on getting away with it. They won’t succeed. I’ll do the same next time,” Bihariová said, adding that the ĽSNS has been ordered to refrain from such behavior, to publish an apology on the party’s web pages and in its newspaper, and to pay her damages of EUR 5,000.
Bihariová is vice-chair of the Progressive Slovakia movement, which profiles itself as a centrist, liberal, pro-EU movement bringing the moderate left and right together. In the economic field, the movement pushes for “rational, pragmatic solutions” from both across the political spectrum, and in the cultural/ethical field it advocates liberal positions.
A lawyer by training, Biháriová is running in 10th place on the Progressive Slovakia candidate list in the early elections to the unicameral legislature being held at the end of September. Kotleba-ĽSNS is a Slovak ultra-right political party which was founded in 2010 by Marian Kotleba.
That party is considered anti-globalist, anti-Islam, antisemitic, nationalist, neo-Fascist and neo-Nazi. Kotleba-ĽSNS is also criticized for its resistance to the EU and NATO and for its animosity toward the Romani minority.
