by Michael Smith
On Sunday, March 15, 2009 some 60 supporters and representatives of the Czech extreme right Workers' Party (DS) marched through the Janov housing estate which is predominantly inhabited by Romanies. No incidents have been reported, according to the police, who monitored the action and who detained two persons. One of them was unlawfully sticking up posters before the event.
The march was intended to intimidate the Romanies living in the housing estate and toi this extent the DS definitely succeeded for Rom resident there were afraid to set foot into the street, so we have ben told, on that very Sunday.
The extremists also presented their shadow mayor of the town. His appointment is an expression of the DS's disagreement with how the Litvinov town hall deals with the situation in Janov, the party says. This shadow mayor is Vladan Renak, 33, a secondary school language teacher, who is not a DS member. He says he believes that nothing would change in the town without the DS. The town is ill, he said, the treatment will be long, but radical and effective.
That can, I am sure, only mean one thing and that is that the DS and this shadow mayor want to remove and expel the Romanies from Janov.
Litvinov's mayor Milan Stovicek said the that DS sponges on the housing estate's problems that the town hall has been solving for some time already.
According to its web page, the DS espouses national socialism and rejects capitalism and communism.
After one of the DS's actions in Litvinov last year, its participants marched to Janov. The event ended in hard clashes between hundreds of rightist radicals and police officers, leaving behind several injured people on both sides.
Some 6000 people live at Janov, where socially weak people were moved to from various parts of the country. Many are unemployed and indebted.
The government wanted the DS to be banned, but the Supreme Administrative Court decided early this month that the evidence the government presented was inconclusive and dismissed the proposal.
We must not forget that this is the supreme court in the very country that also was advocating the creation of Gypsy ghettos with police guards at the only way in or out, claimed to be “in order to protect the Rom from Nazis”.
And, just like in Italy and Hungary, both EU countries, the EU sits idly by and does absolutely nothing. Why is that, one can but wonder.
© M Smith (Veshengro), 2009
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