Jaroslav Stanik (SPD) Faces Trial For Hate Statements

Jaroslav Stanik SPD

Prague, July 23 (CTK) – Former secretary of the opposition Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) movement, Jaroslav Stanik, will be tried in court over the statements he made in parliament about Jews, Roma and gays, Prague District 1 State Attorney’s Office head Jan Lelek told CTK today.

 

Lelek said Stanik was charged with the crimes of fomenting hatred towards a group of people, curtailing people’s rights and freedoms and denying, challenging, approving and justifying genocide on July 19.

 

Stanik faces up to three years in prison if found guilty.

 

According to eyewitnesses, Stanik said in the parliament pub last October that members of minorities should be gassed.

 

“He called for all homosexuals, Roma and Jews to be shot dead instantly after their birth,” former MP Marek Cernoch said Aktualne.cz server previously.

 

SPD chairman Tomio Okamura said Stanik is no longer a SPD member, let alone the secretary.

 

Stanik, 54, was a SPD secretary and an assistant to SPD deputy Jaroslav Holik. He ended in the post of assistant in early December 2017, which Holik explained by Stanik’s being overburdened by his tasks as the secretary.

 

According to Aktualne.cz, Stanik was a member of the communist police from the 1980s and later of the post-1989 Czech police. He was a long-standing member of the CSSD but was expelled from the party in 2012, when he already closely cooperated with Okamura.

 

In his capacity as SPD secretary, Stanik barred journalists from entering the SPD headquarters during the October 2017 general election, in which the movement ended fourth, gaining 22 seats in the 200-seat Chamber of Deputies.

 

In its report on extremism issued earlier this year, the Interior Ministry wrote that the SPD has taken over the extreme-right agenda, but still it cannot be labelled extremist based on the definition used by the ministry.

 

Ethnic minorities’ representatives criticise the SDP for what they call its hate ideology.