Czech Police have asked the Chamber of Deputies to lift the parliamentary immunity from prosecution of Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) leader Tomio Okamura, who is suspected of inciting hatred against an ethnic group in connection with the billboard campaign for last year’s election, police spokesman Jan Danek told CTK today.
The detectives seeking Okamura’s prosecution are from the Prague Police Extremism and Terrorism Department.
Danek said the request had been sent to the lower house this morning.
Requests to release MPs for prosecution are usually sent to the lower house speaker’s office, and from there to the mandates and immunities committee.
A spokesman for parliamentary speaker Marketa Pekarova Adamova (TOP 09) said the request to lift Okamura’s immunity arrived via data box before 11:30, and would be forwarded to the relevant committee.
SPD placed billboards with controversial slogans on Wenceslas Square in the centre of Prague at the beginning of September last year, ahead of regional elections. One of the posters featured a dark-skinned man with a bloody knife and wearing a blood-stained shirt, along with the caption “The shortcomings in the healthcare system will not be solved by imported ‘surgeons'”.
Critics described the poster as racist, and said its aim was simply to spread unnecessary fear among the public. Criminal complaints have been filed in the case.
Writing on social media, Okamura described the campaign as “allegorical”, saying it was a reaction to government actions that would result in migrants entering the Czech Republic. He referred specifically to the approval of the European Union’s migration pact.
Police announced in mid-August that they had opened criminal proceedings over the poster, over possible incitement to hatred against a group of people.
Another SPD election poster of two Roma boys smoking a cigarette also triggered further criminal complaints. The image was created by artificial intelligence, with text reading: “They tell us to go to school, but my parents do not care…” and “Support only for the families where children are in school!”.
SPD’s election campaign was also taken up by the courts. Lawyer Pavla Krejci and other people she represents have been pleading with courts in various regions to protect the integrity of the campaign and to ban the use of both posters.
The regional courts did not accommodate the motions, and the Constitutional Court also declined to intervene, referring the critics of the SPD campaign to the Supreme Administrative Court.
