15 arrests at May Day march in Brno

Thirteen extremists were arrested after scuffles with police during Labor Day protests in Brno that have seen police generally praised for preventing further violence and injury.

About 400 Workers Youth (DM) marchers and supporters took part in an extremist rally in the city against what they termed "the invasion of foreign workers and the exodus of our people."

At the same time, up to 1,400 civic activists and local residents joined the Brno Blocks (Brno blokuje) counter-demonstration, with a third protest staged by the "We Don't Want Neo-Nazis in Brno Initiative" attracting several hundred more protesters.

A large-scale police operation of some 700 officers - including international anti-conflict officers and special video and helicopter surveillance - was mounted to prevent trouble among the three simultaneous demonstrations.

"We arrested 15 people who were taken away for questioning, of whom 13 had participated in the gathering and rally of far-right supporters," Petra Vedrová, spokeswoman for the May 1 police operation, told The Prague Post in a statement, adding that a weapon was seized from one of those held by police.

The arrests included extremists who had tried to physically break through the police cordon, espoused hate speech or bore outlawed symbols on their clothes, flags and banners.

Vedrová said that "the hardest job for the police was to keep separate the two groups of opposing opinions," singling out the work of specialist anti-conflict officers from an Austrian riot police squad known as VEGA for their "significant contribution" in managing the tension.

Police forced the DM march to run in reverse, meaning it was possible to maintain a strict police cordon separating the march from the Brno Blocks initiative.

The governor of south Moravia, Michal Hašek, and Brno's mayor, Roman Onderka, both praised the police action for its professionalism and impartiality.

This praise was echoed by two representatives of the U.S. Embassy who were in attendance to monitor the police operation. Vedrová said that the two women from the embassy's economic and political staff had "highly rated the professionalism of the police officers throughout the operation."

While billed as an extremist youth event, both Workers Party of Social Justice (DSSS) Chairman Tomáš Vandas and his deputy, Jiří Štěpánek, addressed the rally.

Ondřej Daniel, spokesman for the Brno Blocks initiative, called the civic protest a "partial success," pointing out that counter-demonstrators had significantly outnumbered the extremists.

"Our blockade was nonviolent and mobilized a large number of Brno inhabitants," Daniel told The Prague Post, estimating they numbered between 800 and 1,400 participants. "DSSS supporters were shown they are not welcome in Brno."

However, he said, the blockade had not succeeded in preventing the extremists from marching into a neighborhood where many Roma live, something he blamed on the police intervention.

Daniel said while the police "undoubtedly did a good job in de-escalating violence," they "completely failed" the Roma inhabitants of the Cejl, Soudní and Bratislavská streets of the city.

"Police allowed active neo-Nazis and their sympathizers to enter the streets of an ethnically mixed neighborhood chanting, 'We don't want multi-culti, no, no, no,' and other carefully chosen and offensive chants aiming to humiliate Roma," he said.

Daniel added that many local Roma had said they viewed the march as "an attack on their dignity," having been "watched like animals in a zoo."

He said the blockade protest united "Roma, civic activists, leftists, subcultures, students, families and ordinary people" to block the street where the DM march was to begin, only to find that police had reversed the route.

"The failure of the blockade was the fact that the police managed to divert the rally even deeper into the neighborhood in question with strong Roma presence," he added.

Daniel warned that despite the success of the civic initiative, the DM and DSSS had nonetheless "escalated inter-ethnic hatred in Brno," and said now that extremists have managed to enter Roma localities, they may return.

Green Party Chairman Ondřej Liška, who made several legal bids to stop the DM march, and former Human Rights Commissioner Michael Kocáb joined the blockade protest.

Addressing the crowd with a megaphone, Liška said neo-Nazi opponents had the Constitution on their side, and criticized government inaction against right-wing extremism.

"We must take back the public space being dominated by the neo-Nazis today, and we must do it together, irrespective of our skin color," Liška said, news site Romea.cz reported.

Local press in Brno reported both sympathy and opposition from locals to the extremist rally, pointing out that the marchers were greeted with a mixture of shouts of support, smoke shells and unwelcoming banners.

- Klára Jiřičná contributed to this report.

Bill Lehane can be reached at
blehane@praguepost.com