Brno braces itself for Sunday’s neo-Nazi march
The city of Brno, in the south-east of the country, is bracing itself for
Sunday’s extremist march through one of the city’s Romany
neighbourhoods. A local court had overturned a ban on the march issued by
Brno City Hall. Now, police are getting ready to deploy hundreds of
officers to oversee the march, while several local groups are planning to
try and block part of its route.
Brno rapper MC Bonus put out a special track in support of Brno Blocks, an
initiative that will try and block Sunday’s neo-Nazi march through the
streets of Brno.
Several hundred neo-Nazis are expected to turn up and march through an
area in the city centre that is mostly inhabited by Romanies. The stated
goal of the march is to protest against the influx of foreign workers, but
the group Brno Blocks does not doubt the real aim is to intimidate members
of the country’s largest minority. Jiří Koželouh is a spokesman for
the group.
“The aim of the neo-Nazis is very clear. They want to provoke, they want
to spread hatred and fear. So we would like to stage a non-violent but very
strong anti-Nazi protest with the people of Brno, and block the march in
Cejl Street.”
There are some 15,000 Romanies living in the city, many of them in and
around Cejl Street, a few blocks away from Brno’s historic centre.
Brno Blocks asked city officials to ban the march, or dissolve it as soon
as it begins. But Brno City Hall tried to ban the march – only to see the
ban overturned by a local court, arguing it was not fully justified. This
has happened in other communities around the Czech Republic that tried to
ban similar events in the past. Officials complain current legislation
makes it next to impossible to officially ban such marches; Brno City Hall
even petitioned the country’s Constitutional Court to abolish the Czech
Freedom of Assembly Act, which in their view breaches the municipalities’
rights to maintain public order. But Jiří Koželouh from the Brno Blocks
group says no change to the law is needed.
“I think that municipalities have to use all relevant information and
act very fast. For example, Brno authorities did not use public information
about the neo-Nazi background of the organizers and their links with some
extremist organizations like Workers’ Youth and Workers’ Party. So I
don’t think there is a need for more restrictions of public gatherings;
what we need is better work of the authorities and the police.”
Brno Blocks says their blockade will be non-violent. But in the past,
police in fact removed protestors blocking the routes of extremist marches
in other Czech towns.
Two years ago, Brno experienced a similar event. Around 500 far-right
extremists took part in a march through the city centre, organized by the
Workers Party. Last year, the party was dissolved because of its links to
neo-Nazi groups, and four of the march’s organizers landed conditional
sentences and fines for inciting hatred in the addresses they delivered at
the event.
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Brno Blocks asked city officials to ban the march, or dissolve it as soon
as it begins. But Brno City Hall tried to ban the march – only to see the
ban overturned by a local court, arguing it was not fully justified. This
has happened in other communities around the Czech Republic that tried to
ban similar events in the past. Officials complain current legislation
makes it next to impossible to officially ban such marches; Brno City Hall
even petitioned the country’s Constitutional Court to abolish the Czech
Freedom of Assembly Act, which in their view breaches the municipalities’
rights to maintain public order. But Jiří Koželouh from the Brno Blocks
group says no change to the law is needed.
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