Aside from the descendants of the more than 3,000 Roma who died at the site, the former World War II-era labor camp at Lety, south Bohemia, annually draws right-wing extremist groups like the National Party (NS). About 20 representatives of this controversial organization gathered there April 5 to celebrate the publication of their fellow party member Jiří Gaudin's book, The Final Solution of the Gypsy Question in Czech Lands.
The event, supervised by about 30 policemen, ended without major incident, save for misdemeanor charges after participants installed six controversial signs that were taken down by the police the same day. One, a makeshift road sign pointing to "Gypsies" in one direction and "pigs" in another, alluded to a pig farm that currently operates on the former Lety camp site, long-condemned by international human rights groups.
Gaudin explained the signs were installed because of Roma complaints that the former camp was hard to find. "They asked the city for 10 million Kč for the signs, which is the Gypsy mentality, to always ask for help, so we decided to help out."
In his book, Gaudin invokes the air of academia, calling it "not a provocation, but a serious scientific work." He includes the results of an allegedly empirical survey of 817 anonymous participants, supposedly from varying backgrounds, but fails to further describe any efforts to assure the randomness of his population sample.
The results state that 73 percent of participants do not think Roma can be integrated into mainstream society, while 8 percent say yes and 19 percent state they don't know.
Chapters include "The History of the Gypsies," "The Influence of the Gypsies on the State Budget and Economy of the Czech Republic," and a chapter dedicated to nomenclature of the Roma people.
In the last 20 pages, Gaudin discusses the final solution to the Roma issue as suggested by the National Party. The first step, he said, is for the state to cut welfare programs for Roma citizens. "Our short-term solution is to cut down on welfare to discourage people from avoiding work and living off welfare. If you don't work, you don't eat."
The money saved by cutting welfare expenses could then be used for a repatriation fund, Gaudin said. "Our long-term solution would be to repatriate the Roma to their land of origin, India. We have been working on an agreement with India to provide some space for them to live on."
When confronted with this proposal, extremism expert Ondřej Cakl, who heads the monitoring unit of the NGO Tolerance, called it "total nonsense."
"The NS has been known to disseminate wrong information in the past. I highly doubt that any Indian official would listen to them."
Active youth
The past months have seen a surge of extremist activity, most recently April 4, when some 400 ultra right-wingers took to the streets in Přerov, central Moravia, to coincide with U.S. President Barack Obama's arrival in Prague.
Seven hundred policemen were deployed at the event, which escalated when demonstrators began throwing cobblestones and smoke bombs. Forty were arrested, and police were able to confiscate several homemade explosives, baseball bats and other weapons.
In an apparent boost to local neo-Nazi movements, David Duke, former grand wizard of the U.S. white supremacy organization the Ku Klux Klan, is slated to visit the Czech Republic later this month to promote his autobiography. The visit is organized by Filip Vávra of National Resistance (NO), one of the most influential neo-Nazi groups in the Czech Republic.
Cakl explains that, while the National Party has only a marginal following of about 20 members, National Resistance and the far-right Workers Party (DS) have several hundred members, and therefore present a more serious threat.
Cakl adds that extremism, especially violent forms of it, seems to be on the rise in recent years. "The young generation in particular is very active. The Czech far-right movement is one of the strongest in Europe."