Prague, Dec 5 (CTK) – The Czech SPD and Communist (KSCM) leaders, Tomio Okamura and Vojtech Filip, questioned the state purchase of the pig farm in Lety, south Bohemia, situated at the site of a former WW2 camp for the Roma, during the Chamber of Deputies’ session discussing the 2018 state budget draft on Tuesday.
The Czech Republic signed a purchasing contract with the AGPI firm, the owner of the pig farm, for 450 million crowns on November 23.
Okamura, chairman of the anti-EU Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD), also criticised the further expenses projected in relation to redevelopment of the Lety memorial site, saying a memorial, which cost more than 21 million crowns, had been already built on the site.
He argued that other Czech sites of former concentration camps often did not even have a plaque worth 500 crowns put up and that “the only preserved concentration camp in Brnenec [east Bohemia] has been decaying for decades without any aid.”
Filip said he could not comprehend the state buying a business from taxpayers’ money only to demolish it since the farm was not directly situated on the actual plots of the camp. He also said the current memorial was dignified.
Filip also called on the outgoing Finance Minister Ivan Pilny (ANO) to file a suit in order to call the contract invalid.
Pilny said removing the pig farm, which was close to the memorial site, was a good thing, but that the price was extremely high, as he had said before. Nevertheless, the signed contract had to be fulfilled, he said.
MP Karel Schwarzenberg (TOP 09) reiterated that the camp was not run by Germans, but by Czechs, noting it was a Czech disgrace.
“We should not be skimping when it is up to us to deal with the disgrace. It has been making the Czech nation’s and the country’s image ugly for long, even after the Velvet Revolution. It is high time that this pig farm was removed,” Schwarzenberg stressed.
The SPD and the KSCM are considered extremist. The ANO movement of Andrej Babis, which won the recent general election, has not found any government partner among democratic parties so far and it repeatedly joined forces with the SPD and the KSCM in key votes held at the first and second sessions of the Chamber of Deputies.
