Prague, Feb 21 (CTK) – The Czech police accused Freedom and Direct Democracy (SDP) secretary Jaroslav Stanik, whom they previously monitored due to hate and racist utterances offending the Jews, Roma and homosexuals, without mentioning his name, Prague police spokesman Jan Danek told CTK on Wednesday.
The police investigated Stanik on account the statements he made in the Chamber of Deputies at the end of October 2017.
“The criminal investigators launched prosecution of a specific person in connection with the statements of one of the secretaries in the Chamber of Deputies,” Danek said.
The prosecution aims against suspected inciting of hatred against a group of persons or restriction of their rights and freedoms and genocide denial, questioning, approval and justification. The punishment for such criminal act can be up to three years in prison.
The server Aktualne.cz drew attention to the case last year, referring to some of the witnesses of the incident, which happened in the Chamber’s restaurant.
Stanik was reportedly saying minorities’ members should be sent to gas chambers and called for their elimination, saying they needed to be shot already at birth, former Dawn of Direct Democracy MP Marek Cernoch told the server.
Former Labour and Social Affairs Minister Michaela Marksova (Social Democarts, CSSD) told the server that Stanik, heavily drunk, addressed her as Marx-Engels on her entry to the Chamber’s club. He then went on to say she was supporting homosexuals and voiced his opinion that they should be sent to gas chambers and eliminated, she said.
In a press release out on Wednesday, the SPD said Stanik was neither the party’s secretary, nor its member at the moment.
However, his name is still listed on the Chamber’s website, where he has the title of a SPD secretary.
“The Freedom and Direct Democracy movement will not further address this issue until it has been examined,” the release says.
Apart from being the SPD’s secretary, Stanik was also assistant to MP Jaroslav Holik (SPD) until early in December 2017. According to Aktualne.cz, he was a member of the Czechoslovak police corps during Communism and later of the Czech police. He was a long-time member of the CSSD, but was expelled from the party in 2012, already being a close collaborator of SPD head Tomio Okamura. During the October 2017 general election, he prevented journalists from entering the election crew area and called the police to remove them from it.
According to a press release by the SPD out on Wednesday, the movement is considering filing a criminal complaint against Justice Minister Robert Pelikan (ANO) over his statement about the movement being fascist in an interview with Hospodarske noviny (HN) daily.
Pelikan told HN it was unacceptable that he would be a member of a cabinet backed by the votes of SPD as he would then have to correct his opinions and procedures based on the wishes of ” a fascist party.”
The SPD said similar statements were usually issued by an incompetent minister who is unable to cope with his office and that he wanted to harm the ANO movement and prevent a meaningful and constructive debate on the set-up of a new cabinet.
