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May Day incident was 'inhumane'

Rights groups renew call for independent police monitoring

By Hilda Hoy
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
May 16th, 2007 issue

KURT VINION/THE PRAGUE POST
A May Day demonstrator is subdued by officers, who were criticized for misconduct.
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Petr Dolínek, 26, decided to spend this past May 1 standing up for what he believes in.
On the morning of May Day, he and 25 of his fellow Young Social Democrats (MSD) headed to downtown Prague to confront a group of extreme-right-wing marchers.
“We were there because we wanted to say no to the fascists,” says Dolínek, the current president of the MSD.
Instead, by that afternoon all 26 of them had been arrested for disturbing public order because they tried to block the fascist rally. At a nearby police station, the group was ordered to strip naked en masse and bend down into a squat while police officers watched. Later that afternoon, they were sent home.
The incident is part of a string of allegations against police in recent years, and draws fresh attention to the issue of police misconduct in this country.
The police say the treatment is normal procedure for searching detainees. The MSD and Czech human rights groups say it went too far, especially considering the nonviolent protest methods of the MSD.
“This is just bullying … and unacceptable from human rights standards in terms of degrading or inhumane treatment,” says Jiří Kopal, a lawyer and chairman of the Czech League of Human Rights (LLP).
The treatment of the MSD youths has members of the Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) up in arms. One ČSSD deputy, Jan Hamáček, compared the treatment to the notorious abuse of prisoners at the hands of U.S. soldiers in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.
David Rath, another ČSSD deputy, agrees.
“I don’t get why the arrested people were made to get naked. … This was not necessary. … The principle is the same as in Abu Ghraib — to humiliate the arrested people,” he says.
“The police … are authorized to use coercive measures under the law when necessary,” says police spokeswoman Eva Miklíková. “Similarly, the police of the Czech Republic are authorized under the law to perform safety and personal checks of the persons arrested.”
The law requires searches to be conducted by officers of the same sex as the detainee, and that protocol was followed in this case, Dolínek confirmed. The 24 male MSD members had to strip in front of several male police officers, while the two female members stripped in a separate room with female officers.
Though the police continue to defend their actions, a May 10 press release from police headquarters announced the incident was being placed under review.
“We found that the documentation of the police action (mainly the process of arresting the demonstrators) is not complete and the procedure was not according to the Czech Republic’s police law,” the release says.
Policing the police
This latest incident highlights past examples when police have been criticized for what could be considered inappropriate, even brutal, tactics.
On May Day last year, police beat up Kateřina Jacques, now a Green Party member of the Chamber of Deputies, when she refused to stop protesting against a far-right rally. Pictures of her bruised and battered face flooded the Czech media, and several police officers were punished.
The most prominent case of police misconduct in recent years took place in July 2005, when TV news cameras captured riot police violently using clubs, tear gas and water cannons to crack down on youths at an outdoor electronic-music festival called CzechTek.
Despite these high-profile incidents, the level of misconduct among Czech police is “about average” when they’re compared with their European counterparts, Kopal says.
But it’s the fallout from these incidents that illustrate a serious problem: Unlike many European countries, the Czech Republic lacks an independent office to investigate police misconduct. Instead, these charges are looked into by an inspection office within the Interior Ministry, which also oversees the police force.
What’s more, says the LLP’s Kopal, this inspection force is staffed entirely by former police officers who still retain their ranks. “It’s a police organ. There are only policemen [on staff]…. There is a lack of independence and impartiality,” he says.
The Czech branch of human rights group Amnesty International is lobbying to change this, says spokeswoman Eva Dobrovolná.
“The ministry’s inspection … lacks credibility. This fact was raised also by the UN Committee against Torture and the UN Human Rights Committee,” she says.
There have been some signs of progress. The current three-party coalition government has officially agreed that forming an independent office to investigate police is a priority, says Kopal.
After the fallout from the CzechTek incident, police established special “anti-conflict” units that “aim at solving problems before coercive measures are resorted to,” such as tear gas and clubs, says Police Presidium spokesman Jiří Vokuš. “We have really positive feedback and experience with these teams.”
Kopal is skeptical. Even if an independent investigative office is formed, the police force is in need of serious reforms to clear out a lingering communist-era mentality, he says.
“There is still this attitude that [the police] are some sort of army, an armed force” to fight against the citizenry, he says.
MSD President Petr Dolínek, still angry over his May Day arrest, is skeptical too. “I think the whole police procedure was wrong. We did nothing to break the law.”
— Naďa Černá and Hela Balínová contributed to this report.

Hilda Hoy can be reached at hhoy@praguepost.com


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