Prague, March 15 (CTK) – The In Iustitia NGO registered 86 cases of hate violence in the Czech Republic in 2014, mostly concerning the nationality, ethnicity or religion of the victim, and an increasing number of incidents committed by common people who are not extremists, the group writes in its annual report.
The strongest trend seems to be Islamophobia, according to the In Iustitia, a Czech organisation that provides legal aid victims of hate violence.
The typical victim of hate violence was a man aged 25 to 45 years who has Czech citizenship and the most threatened groups were Romanies and Muslims, the report says.
Verbal assaults were the most frequent and one third of the cases were physical attacks. The highest number of incidents occurred in Prague, followed by Brno and the north Moravian town of Havirov.
The police investigated half of the cases as hate violence.
In 40 cases, the perpetrator was identified. In 17 cases it were supporters of far-right movements.
The number of incidents is not decreasing, even though there is no strong extremist movement in the country. This is due to the fact that more “ordinary people” were among the attackers, the group says.
In 2011, In Iustitia registered 57 cases of hate violence.
It is very alarming that some politicians and town halls support repressive solutions, the NGO writes.
The limits of what is still acceptable are moved by media and social networking websites, In Iustitia says.
The academic community does not focus on the issue and there is no body that would deal with prevention, apart from the Hate Free Culture government campaign, the NGO writes.
Victims of hate violence have a limited access to justice as the relevant services are not available enough due to a lack of finances and insufficient legal conditions, the annual report says.
