Czech right-wing opposition leader Tomio Okamura is facing criminal prosecution and potentially up to three years in prison over anti-migration posters produced during his party’s 2024 campaign.
The case has ignited fierce debate, with Okamura alleging that the government is seeking to silence dissent.
Czech police proposed filing charges against Okamura and his Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party on Thursday, July 24th, accusing them of incitement to hatred in connection with last year’s regional election campaign.
SPD posters depicted a black man in a blood-stained shirt holding a knife alongside the slogan: “Shortcomings in the health care system will not be solved by imported ‘surgeons.’”
The slogan was a clear mockery of the EU’s liberal politicians who, for years, have been justifying their pro-migration stance with a shortage in the European labour market, ignoring the fact that not only are most of the migrants not surgeons or engineers, but a large number of them have also failed to integrate into European society.
Another AI-generated image showed two Roma boys smoking a cigarette, with the accompanying text reading, “They tell us to go to school, but my parents don’t care at all…” and “Support only for families where children go to school.”
If convicted, Okamura faces up to three years in prison. The Czech parliament had earlier lifted his parliamentary immunity, clearing the way for prosecution.
Okamura has responded defiantly, framing the legal action as a politically motivated effort to stifle opposition. “Those who need to silence their opponents with censorship and jail have lost the debate—and they know it. When the state punishes opposing opinions, it does not protect democracy. They are destroying it,” he tweeted.
While the image conveyed by the SPD may indeed be exaggerated and offensive, it is hard to ignore the fact that the calls for Okamura’s indictment come as his party is consistently rising in the polls and is set to finish third with 14% of the votes at the October parliamentary elections.
The party is only overtaken by the governing centre-right Europhile Spolu coalition (19%) and another anti-migration party, former prime minister Andrej Babiš’s populist ANO (32%).
Babiš, too, is being constantly harassed by the authorities. In a “fraud” case that has lasted for decades, a Czech court recently overturned his acquittal, raising the suspicion that Babiš and his ANO party were being attacked just months before the elections.
His case has drawn parallels to other popular right-wing leaders of Europe, like Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini, who are being targeted by their rivals and their countries’ activist judges.
While centrist and left-wing lawmakers in the Czech Republic distanced themselves from the tone of Tomio Okamura and his SPD party’s messaging, Babiš’s ANO warned against political overreach by the government.
ANO MP Radek Vondráček, for example, described SPD’s campaign as “stupid, tasteless” but urged caution, stating, “That doesn’t mean it’s a criminal offence.”
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