Prague/The Hague, Sept 6 (CTK) – Czech presidential spokesman Jiri Ovcacek on Tuesday rejected the words of U.N. High Human Rights Commissioner Zeid Hussein who named President Milos Zeman among whom he called demagogues and political fantasists with behaviour and rhetoric reminding of Islamic State.
Hussein also mentioned Geert Wilders, the Dutch critic of Islam, Marine Le Pen, chairwoman of the French National Party, Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for U.S. president, Robert Fico, prime minister of Slovakia, and other politicians in this connection.
“What Wilders shares in common with Trump, [Hungarian PM Viktor] Orban, Zeman, [Austrian presidential candidate Norbert] Hofer, Fico, Le Pen, [British nationalists’ leader Nigel] Farage, he also shares with Daesh [IS],” portal Time quotes Hussein as saying in a speech at a conference in The Hague on Monday.
“Populists use half-truths and over-simplifications, the two scalpels of the arch propagandist, and here the Internet and social media are a perfect rail for them,” he said.
In reaction to him, Ovcacek told CTK on Tuesday that Zeman will continue to defend the Czech Republic against the threat of terrorism with which migration is linked.
“No commissioner will dictate to our country,” Ovcacek said, calling Hussein’s words an interference in the sovereignty of individual countries.
“It is necessary to realise that it [Hussein’s statement] actually amounts to an attempt to interfere in the free elections in the USA,” Ovcacek said.
He said Zeman has been consistent in his referring to the danger carried by the migrant wave.
“The commissioner is using various methods and various expressive statements within his effort to make individual European countries accept illegal migrants,” Ovcacek added.
Although Hussein mentioned a number of European politicians with controversial views, the main target of his criticism was Wilders, who recently promised to close down all mosques in the Netherlands and ban immigration from Muslim countries if he succeeded in the forthcoming election.
“I certainly do not equate the actions of nationalist demagogues with those of Daesh…But in its mode of communication, its use of half-truths and oversimplification, the propaganda of Daesh uses tactics similar to those of the populists. And both sides of this equation benefit from each other – indeed would not expand in influence without each others’ actions,” Hussein, a member of the Jordan royal family who has been U.N. human rights commissioner since 2014, said.
Zeman, former Social Democrat prime minister, became Czech president in 2013 as the first head of state chosen directly by people.
