Project aimed at fighting hate crime acquires fresh urgency in light of
migrant crisis
In 2015 the government launched a two year project to help fight hate crime
directed against Romanies and other minorities in the Czech Republic. With
the migrant crisis, the project acquired a broader scope and greater
urgency. In Iustitia, an NGO that helps victims of hate crime was involved
in the undertaking. I spoke to its founder, lawyer Klára Kalibová, to
find out more.
“In Iustitia was a partner in this project organised by the Office of the
Government and the Agency for Social Inclusion which launched a campaign
against racism and hate violence. The campaign targeted several areas such
as the training of police officers and developing guidelines for the police
-for which we were directly responsible, also the training of teachers, a
public campaign on social media called Hate Free and research in socially
excluded areas.”
Originally though it was linked to hate crime against Romanies, wasn’t
it?
“Actually, the main impulse for this campaign were the demonstrations in
Litvinov in 2008, violent demonstrations against the Roma inhabitants of
socially excluded areas and the idea was to train people who could help
hate crime victims to survive and to cooperate with the criminal-justice
system. That is why police officers and teachers were given special
training.”
So how are police officers trained in this respect?
“The training was to enhance the ability of the police not only to
investigate biased motivation of hate crimes, but also to deal with hate
crime victims to provide them with necessary assistance or to refer them to
organizations that are service providers for victims of hate crime.”
But, one would have expected them to have this training already as police
officers – so what are you actually training them in?
“It is partially diversity training, hate crime victim oriented training
which means that the people endangered by hate violence and their needs are
at the centre of attention. We train the police to understand their needs,
to detect them and to respond to them adequately. For people who are
endangered by hate violence or victims it is crucial for them to know that
the police are taking their situation seriously. They need to hear that and
they need to hear it from the police.”
Who does this concern in the Czech Republic? How much hate crime is there
and what kind of hate crime is it?
“Our organization engages in monitoring hate violence long term, we have
statistics since 2011 that suggest hate violence is on the rise and the
forms of hate violence and the target groups are changing. It is not only
the Romany minority but also foreigners, Muslims and people who work in
NGOs and human rights organizations that help potential targets and
victims. That for us is rather surprising, that people who engage on behalf
of refugees and the Roma are the third largest community endangered by hate
crime. They get verbal abuse, threats, and even death threats.”
Originally hate crime was targeted against Romanies, has the migrant
crisis worsened the situation, broadened the problem?
“For the Roma population it is still the same, a couple of dozen hate
crimes a year, as regards migrants there has been a steep increase, as well
as for human rights activists.”
You said the victims often don’t trust police officers. How was this
campaign received in the ranks of the police?
“It was a surprise for me that the police management was really open to
this kind of training and I believe that we can build on that. Sometimes we
had issues with some individuals, but that occurs, and this is the very
first training of its kind in that scope in the Czech Republic.”
You trained officers in two regions I believe?
“Yes, we trained officers in the Usti nad Labem region and in northern
Moravia. ”
What were the most important lessons conveyed – apart for the need to
take victims seriously?
“That was actually the most important lesson, because our police
officers are actually quite good at investigating hate crimes but they need
more experience in some areas of bias motivated crime, because the case law
is developing, the situation is developing, the typology of perpetrators is
changing…They actually know the law very well. Sometimes they are not
able to apply it successfully and some of them are quite sceptical, because
they do not see their efforts bear fruit. I have met many police officers
who tried very hard in several hate crime cases and were not successful in
filing charges because in the Czech Republic it is the state attorney who
decides whether the case should go to court or not. And if that happens
repeatedly those police officers lose the motivation to investigate this
type of crime.”
Do you feel that incidents such as that which happened at the Slavik music
awards recently –that a band with racist lyrics took part and a Romany
singer walked out of the ceremony – does this kind of thing fuel racism
and intolerance in the Czech Republic. Do you feel that the band should not
have been allowed to compete?
“Yes, I believe the band should not have been allowed to compete. That
is the responsibility of the organizers of the contest. It is not just
outrageous that the band was allowed to compete, but also that after
another singer, Radek Banga, left the ceremony he was abused online, he was
criticized by other singers and now he stands almost alone against
incredible hatred.”
It is more than a quarter of a century since communism fell and borders
opened. Have you not monitored any improvement over that time in terms of
growing tolerance and less hate crime?
“In terms of physical violence there has been a significant improvement
because in the 1990s things were much worse, then we had murders of
Romanies and we do not have that now. But what we see is a general
worsening in the attitude of the society, lack of social engagement, lack
of common sense and decent behaviour. I wouldn’t say that the Czech young
generation is more or less racist than that in Germany or Britain, but what
we lack in post-communist societies is community engagement .”
There is a lot of hate speech on social networks -how can that be
addressed?
“It can be addressed by law, it can be addressed by engagement and it
can be addressed by diplomacy.”
People there obviously feel safer, they are anonymous….
“Yes, perpetrators feel they are safer and they are right, because
Facebook at least does not protect people against hate speech sufficiently
although here in the Czech Republic we have laws which protect people
against these verbal attacks as well. Hate speech online is a crime but in
my experience Facebook does not cooperate with the Czech police to
investigate incidents of verbal crime and in those circumstances people
really feel clueless and powerless. Sometimes they suffer more by being
target long-term online than from an individual physical attack. So what we
need here is real engagement on the part of Facebook to protect our society
from hatred.”
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