Interior Ministry Report: Okamura’s SPD Threatens Society

Milos Zeman standing on podium with Tomio Okamaru at SPD rally

Prague, May 30 (CTK) – The Czech Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) deals with similar issues like right-wing extremists and takes similar positions on them, but sometimes the SPD’s statements are even more radical, the Interior Ministry says in a report yet to be officially released, Aktualne.cz has written.

 

The text of the annual report, which has been usually released in late May, may still be changed.

 

The SPD said the publishing of the contents of the unofficial text in the media aims to politically harm the SPD, which, together with the Pirates, are the third strongest parties in the Chamber of Deputies, each with 22 of the Chamber’s total 200 seats.

 

Before, previous reports on extremism referred to Tomio Okamura’s SPD movement mainly in connection with its anti-immigration rhetoric.

 

This year’s report writes on the SPD on 1.5 pages, server Aktualne.cz writes.

 

It says the report warns, without naming any party, that it is not traditional extremist parties but xenophobic and populist ones that pose the biggest danger.

 

Moreover, the report’s authors warn that populists and extremists want to influence the strategic decision-making in the field of security, including Czech membership of NATO and the EU.

 

The draft report has been completed by experts and is now waiting for the signature of Interior Minister Lubomir Metnar (for ANO). Afterwards it will be assessed by various authorities before the cabinet takes a vote on it.

 

Metnar told Aktualne.cz that the report must be fine-tuned and the cabinet is unlikely to discuss it at its nearest meeting next week.

 

The SPD said it is scandalous that media know the draft report’s content still before its official approval.

 

Cooperation between a part of the media and the Interior Ministry indicates “clearly totalitarian tendencies,” the SPD wrote in a press release also obtained by CTK.

 

“Cooperation of state bodies and a part of the media in the political struggle is a method typical if fascist and communist regimes,” the SPD wrote.

 

This January, SPD leader Okamura made statements downplaying the suffering of the inmates of the wartime Roma internment camp in Lety, south Bohemia. He said the camp had not been fenced and people could freely move in it. Later he apologised for having wrongly described the camp as unfenced, but insisted that no one guarded the fence or barred the inmates’ free movement.

 

SPD MP Miroslav Rozner, on his part, labelled the Lety camp “a never-existing would-be concentration camp.”

 

In February, SPD former secretary Jaroslav Stanik was arrested and accused in connection with his previous hate utterances against Jews, Roma and homosexuals.

 

Members of ethnic minorities have condemned the hate ideology of Okamura and other SPD representatives. Reservations about it have also been voiced by Justice Minister Robert Pelikan (ANO), who labelled the SPD a fascist party in a newspaper interview in February.

 

Foreign Minister Martin Stropnicky (ANO), too, has called Okamura’s words about the Lety camp unacceptable.