The number of university graduates and Czechs with secondary education among people arrested for extremist crimes markedly increased in 2009, the daily Hospodarske noviny writes yesterday, citing the Interior Ministry's annual report that has not yet been officially released. Although the numbers are small, the change should not be underestimated, the report says. While the police detained 18 secondary school leavers and six graduates in 2008, it was 51 and 20 last year. A typical Czech neo-Nazi supporter is not a violent man with just primary education anymore, the paper writes. "The police were after the organisers. Before they mostly accused activists wearing Nazi symbols," Klara Kalibova, from an NGO supporting victims of racist violence, said in explanation of the increased numbers. It was also proved that extremist supporters are in the military and the police, the paper writes. The military police investigated 12 soldiers over suspected support to extremism. The ministry's report writes that large-scale police operations struck hard against the far-right extremists. But experts take a more reserved stance on the situation, the daily says. "The success of last year's police operations can be evaluated only after the courts decide on the charges," Michal Mazel, court expert in extremism, told the paper. The Czech police carried out similar operations in the past but the right-wing radicals were not seriously hit because only a few of them were really punished, the paper writes. It recalls that Hate Core Shop selling clothes and music popular among extremists continues to operate on a new address even though its owner was accused last year. In 2009, the connection between the far-right Workers' Party and neo-Nazi groups was definitively confirmed. The Workers' Party was successful in the European elections last June. Though it was far from winning a seat in the European Parliament, it obtained over 1 percent of the vote and was authorised to get a financial contribution from the state. But the Supreme Administrative Court banned the party earlier this year.
Apart from political meetings, extremists held sports games and militant training events in 2009, the paper writes. Thanks to police pressure the radicals nearly stopped organising music concerts in the Czech Republic. While at least 17 concerts were held in the first six months of 2009, it was only one in the second half of the year. The ministry's report, however, notes that Czech extremists started to organise concerts abroad, especially in places where Czech radical fans can easily get, mostly in the neighbouring Slovakia and Poland. These concerts were not meetings of European radicals but events organised only by Czechs and often only with Czech participants. As these concerts were not monitored by the police, the participants were far more open, the paper writes. "At the last of these concerts there was a fund raising for the persons charged with the arson attack at a Romany family in Vitkov and this attack was supported at the concerts," the report says. Last April, arsonists attacked a Romany family house in Vitkov, north Moravia, with three Molotov cocktails. Three people were injured by the fire, including a two-year-old girl who suffered burns on 80 percent of her body. The trial of the four suspects in the case, all right-wing extremists from north Moravia, is to start on May 11.
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