Czech Court Bans Far-Right Party
By DAN BILEFSKY
Published: February 18, 2010
PRAGUE — A Czech court has banned the far-right Workers’ Party, the first time a political party has been outlawed since the Czech Republic was founded in 1993.
In its 120-page ruling on Wednesday, the Supreme Administrative Court said the Workers’ Party, established in 2003, was a threat to Czech democracy. The court described the party as xenophobic, anti-Semitic and homophobic and said it shared the ideology of Hitler’s Nazi party and maintained links to openly white-supremacist and racist groups.
“This ruling needs to be understood as a preventive one, to maintain the constitutional and democratic order in the future,” Judge Vojtech Simicek said in issuing the ruling. Noting that the party held up an uncomfortable mirror to Czech society, he added: “Society must realize that the causes for the Workers’ Party lie deeply within itself. The Workers’ Party is not an external enemy to society, but one of its faces.”
The party’s chairman, Tomas Vandas, said he would appeal. He insisted that the ruling would not stop him or other members from running in elections this May through a party that is closely connected to the dissolved group.
“The Workers’ Party is dead, long live the Workers’ Party,” he shouted into a megaphone to dozens of his followers outside the courtroom. “We are only being banned because we are voicing uncomfortable opinions. But if anybody thinks that this decision is wiping us off the political map, they are wrong.”
The ban against the party, which was instigated by a legal complaint from the government, comes as fears are growing that right-wing parties in Eastern and Central Europe are exploiting the global financial crisis to foment hatred and make scapegoats of minority groups.
In the Czech Republic, where radical right-wing demonstrators have clashed with the police as they have tried to march through Gypsy, or Roma, neighborhoods, a small child was severely burned last April after assailants threw gas bombs into her home in the town of Vitkov, in northern Moravia.
In Hungary, where the far-right party Jobbik won three seats in the European Parliament elections last year, at least seven Roma have been killed and Roma leaders have counted about 30 firebomb attacks against Roma homes.
Yet analysts emphasized that the Workers’ Party remained very much a fringe party in the Czech Republic and had little prospect of passing the 5 percent threshold necessary to win seats in the Czech Parliament in the May elections. The party won just over 1 percent of the vote in last year’s European Parliament elections.
Interior Minister Martin Pecina, who filed the motion on behalf of the cabinet, welcomed the decision, saying it was necessary to help safeguard democracy.
“I said right from the very beginning that in a democratic society the battle against extremism never ends,” Mr. Pecina said. “However, we can fight the manifestations of far-right activity.”
He added that the authorities faced a choice between eradicating far-right groups as soon as they emerged or waiting “for police cars to be set on fire and petrol bombs to be thrown.”
Some legal experts questioned how effective the ruling would be in eliminating hate crimes and speech, noting that banned parties often reconstituted themselves under different names. Others argued that guaranteeing free speech was the best safeguard of democracy because it exposed racism rather than forcing it underground.
Robert A. Kushen, a human rights lawyer who is managing director of the European Roma Rights Center, a support group in Budapest, said the ruling was a useful symbolic gesture that hatred and xenophobia would not be tolerated. But he stressed that aggressively prosecuting individuals responsible for hate crimes was a far more effective legal tool to fight racism than banning xenophobic political parties. “Laws to limit free speech can also be used against the good guys,” he said.
Experts said the ruling could give impetus to a separate attempt by a group of Czech senators to ban the Communist Party, the only surviving one in the former Eastern Bloc and, to its many critics, a national embarrassment and aberration.
Jan Krcmar contributed reporting.
By DAN BILEFSKY
Published: February 18, 2010
PRAGUE — A Czech court has banned the far-right Workers’ Party, the first time a political party has been outlawed since the Czech Republic was founded in 1993.
In its 120-page ruling on Wednesday, the Supreme Administrative Court said the Workers’ Party, established in 2003, was a threat to Czech democracy. The court described the party as xenophobic, anti-Semitic and homophobic and said it shared the ideology of Hitler’s Nazi party and maintained links to openly white-supremacist and racist groups.
“This ruling needs to be understood as a preventive one, to maintain the constitutional and democratic order in the future,” Judge Vojtech Simicek said in issuing the ruling. Noting that the party held up an uncomfortable mirror to Czech society, he added: “Society must realize that the causes for the Workers’ Party lie deeply within itself. The Workers’ Party is not an external enemy to society, but one of its faces.”
The party’s chairman, Tomas Vandas, said he would appeal. He insisted that the ruling would not stop him or other members from running in elections this May through a party that is closely connected to the dissolved group.
“The Workers’ Party is dead, long live the Workers’ Party,” he shouted into a megaphone to dozens of his followers outside the courtroom. “We are only being banned because we are voicing uncomfortable opinions. But if anybody thinks that this decision is wiping us off the political map, they are wrong.”
The ban against the party, which was instigated by a legal complaint from the government, comes as fears are growing that right-wing parties in Eastern and Central Europe are exploiting the global financial crisis to foment hatred and make scapegoats of minority groups.
In the Czech Republic, where radical right-wing demonstrators have clashed with the police as they have tried to march through Gypsy, or Roma, neighborhoods, a small child was severely burned last April after assailants threw gas bombs into her home in the town of Vitkov, in northern Moravia.
In Hungary, where the far-right party Jobbik won three seats in the European Parliament elections last year, at least seven Roma have been killed and Roma leaders have counted about 30 firebomb attacks against Roma homes.
Yet analysts emphasized that the Workers’ Party remained very much a fringe party in the Czech Republic and had little prospect of passing the 5 percent threshold necessary to win seats in the Czech Parliament in the May elections. The party won just over 1 percent of the vote in last year’s European Parliament elections.
Interior Minister Martin Pecina, who filed the motion on behalf of the cabinet, welcomed the decision, saying it was necessary to help safeguard democracy.
“I said right from the very beginning that in a democratic society the battle against extremism never ends,” Mr. Pecina said. “However, we can fight the manifestations of far-right activity.”
He added that the authorities faced a choice between eradicating far-right groups as soon as they emerged or waiting “for police cars to be set on fire and petrol bombs to be thrown.”
Some legal experts questioned how effective the ruling would be in eliminating hate crimes and speech, noting that banned parties often reconstituted themselves under different names. Others argued that guaranteeing free speech was the best safeguard of democracy because it exposed racism rather than forcing it underground.
Robert A. Kushen, a human rights lawyer who is managing director of the European Roma Rights Center, a support group in Budapest, said the ruling was a useful symbolic gesture that hatred and xenophobia would not be tolerated. But he stressed that aggressively prosecuting individuals responsible for hate crimes was a far more effective legal tool to fight racism than banning xenophobic political parties. “Laws to limit free speech can also be used against the good guys,” he said.
Experts said the ruling could give impetus to a separate attempt by a group of Czech senators to ban the Communist Party, the only surviving one in the former Eastern Bloc and, to its many critics, a national embarrassment and aberration.
Jan Krcmar contributed reporting.
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