Criminal complaint filed against Czech political party for racist campaign

Jiří Pospíšil, the head of the TOP 09 party Prague division, has filed a criminal complaint against the Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party over a campaign that used a photograph of a dark-skinned man holding a bloody knife. The campaign incites hatred against minorities, he said on the X network Tuesday.

After the image was criticized, junior opposition SPD chairman Tomio Okamura wrote on the network that the campaign was merely a reaction to the government’s actions, which he says will lead to a flow of migrants to the Czech Republic. He is referring to the approval of the EU's recent migration pact.

Pospíšil criticized the SPD’s posts and posters, which show a dark-skinned man with a bloody knife wearing a blood-stained shirt, along with the text: "The shortcomings in the healthcare system will not be solved by imported 'surgeons'” and "Stop the EU Migration Pact.”

Political scientist from Brno's Masaryk University Otto Eibl told Czech media outlet iDnes.cz that the poster uses a dangerous shortcut, stereotypes and associates migrants from Africa with violence. "I guess that a trained doctor from one of the African countries will not automatically wave a knife and threaten passers-by on the street after arriving in Europe," he added.

“Today, I filed a criminal complaint against the SPD political movement and those responsible for their marketing campaign related to the upcoming elections,” said Pospíšil.

“Such expressions of ethnic hatred must not become a normal part of the campaigns of populist parties,” he added.

“This is a reaction to the adoption of the EU migration pact, thanks to which up to 30,000 migrants that Western Europe does not want will flow into the Czech Republic every year,” Okamura wrote on the X network today.

In response, the Interior Ministry stated that the pact cannot force any country to accept migrants.

“States can choose whether to provide countries under migratory pressure with financial resources, relocation, or material security or to combine such support. Relocations, i.e., the transfer of an asylum seeker from state A to state B for the purpose of carrying out an asylum procedure, are not mandatory in any situation, even in the case of an emergency situation,” the Ministry of the Interior said on its website.

The opposition SPD movement won one seat in the June European Parliament (EP) elections in coalition with Tricolour, so the movement lost one seat. The SPD leadership described this as a failure.