Vávra was behind an invitation extended last year to former Ku-Klux-Klan leader David Duke, whose visit to the Czech Republic ended in his detention and deportation. Police charged him with denying the Holocaust in his book “My Awakening”, which has come out in Czech translation. His prosecution was later halted. Over the past two years, police have focused greater attention on promoters of extremism. The Security Information Service (Bezpeènostní informaèní služba – BIS), the country’s civilian counter-intelligence agency, reported at the start of May that right-wing extremist activity fell in the Czech Republic during the first three months of 2010. BIS says developments on the neo-Nazi scene were particularly influenced by last year’s police raids against members of the scene and the trial of the Workers’ Party (Dìlnická strana - DS) which ended in the party’s ban. The right-wing radical scene is currently the least united and most fragmented it has ever been. According to a Czech Interior Ministry report on the issue of extremism in 2009, the number of people charged in relation to extremism last year rose by half the number charged in 2008. The incidence of extremist crime rose by more than one-fifth, but such crimes still comprise only 0.07 % of crime overall. The report said the April arson attack on the home of a Romani family in Vítkov was the most serious extremist crime of last year.
Romea
