Light sentences for racist attack come under fire
The verdict of a regional court which gave three youths found guilty of a
brutal racist attack against a Romany couple a three year suspended
sentence has evoked outrage among the Romany minority. They have
petitioned the government and the justice ministry, demanding a fair and
just trial. Deputy Prime Minister Petr Mares, who also professed to have
been shocked by the benevolent sentences, has asked the justice minister
for an explanation. We asked the government's human rights commissioner
Jan Jarab how he perceived the verdict of the Jesenik court:
"I think it is correct to call it an outrage but it wouldn't be
correct to call it a surprise because in the last fourteen years we have
seen a number of such verdicts and it seems that it is the rule, not the
exception, that people who commit such attacks -very brutal violent
attacks against the Roma - and the offenders are themselves mostly members
of Neo-Nazi organizations - they are treated very lightly as if they were
just young hooligans who had just drank a little bit more than usual, with
a benevolence that is missing when the courts are dealing with property
crimes. It seems that a crime against a person, particularly if that
person happens to be a member of a minority is treated far more lightly
and that is wrong."
Why do you think that is so?
"I think this is the perception of the old regime which is still here
and is being passed on - to some extent - to new judges - that they are
there to maintain order in the face of the real delinquents -meaning the
people who commit property crimes. The judges then perceive incidents such
as the one we are discussing as incidents between two groups of people
-one of which is disorderly i.e. the Roma and another which is perhaps not
doing the right thing but isn't typically delinquent."
But this is the verdict of an independent court after all what can you do
as the government's human rights commissioner to influence this state of
affairs?
"We cannot influence the courts, which are independent, on any
particular case. What we would like to do is influence on a broader scale
the way in which the judiciary perceives such cases in general because it
seems that the independence of the judiciary in such cases is strikingly
similar to the independence of the judiciary in the American south a
hundred years ago where you also didn't go to jail for lynching a black
person because an independent court would never sentence a white person
for lynching."
Do you think there is enough support among Czech politicians for this to
gradually change?
"No.....I am afraid that it is not perceived in society as such -and
therefore by most mainstream politicians -as being a real problem."
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