• What is the dialogue "Who beat you up?" about?

In this dialogue, our heroes are confronted with an unpleasant event which takes them unawares. Tim has been the target of a racist attack, and he is in shock, angry at the whole world, and looking for someone to blame. Unpleasant experiences have left him suspicious and willing to hurl accusations even against those who may not have been responsible for the attack.
This kind of situation is relatively complex and touches upon many problems. In this text, we focus on the problem of racist violence and its perpetrators in the Czech Republic and in the world at large.

• What is...?

Racist violence: This involves physical and other attacks against a person or group in which the sole motive is that this person or group is of a different race, ethnic group or nationality than the offender.

Victim of racist violence: A person who looks different from the majority population. In the Czech Republic, this mainly involves Roma people, and in the rest of Europe mainly immigrants and refugees.

Racism: A broader concept which, as well as racist violence and discrimination, includes the ideologies behind racist violence and the various forms of negative behaviour exhibited by various people, i.e. from physical attacks using baseball bats and knives, to arson, spitting, jostling, jeering, and breaking windows in the apartments of ethnic minorities or immigrants.
The otherness of the victims of racism in relation to the majority population (the distinction between “us” and “them”) is the basic mark of racism, which thus far jurisprudence has failed to come to terms with.

Criminal policy of the state: The targeted activity of specialised bodies aimed at prosecuting unlawful actions and punishing their perpetrators.

Punishment: Imposed upon a perpetrator of a criminal act in accordance with the Criminal Code, which stipulates the level of the sentence applied to individual criminal acts. The courts decide on the specific sentence (e.g. for criminal acts, a sentence of three to five years in prison, but also forfeiture of property, etc.). Basically, punishment has three functions – a deterrent function, i.e. discouraging other potential perpetrators from committing such a crime, an isolation function, i.e. removing the perpetrator from society and thus preventing them from committing further acts for a certain period of time, and an educational function, i.e. encouraging the perpetrator to lead a regular life after their release from prison and not to commit further crimes.

• Topic

The basis of a racist motive is that the perpetrator has turned on their victim for the reason of their otherness. This aspect distinguishes racist attacks from other examples of assault and battery (or grievous bodily harm or murder). The bodies active in criminal proceedings must demonstrate that this motive was operative in the perpetrator. In practice this is complicated, since the perpetrator naturally argues that the cause of their attack was the fact that a Roma, for instance, annoyed them as a person and not as a member of a different ethnic group. They may even claim that they did not notice that the victim was a Roma. However, it is not possible to change the policy of the sanction such that a racist motive could be ascribed to all youths with short hair and bomber jackets if they get into a pub fight with a member of the minority Roma community. Wider problems in the sphere of legal theory are involved; in order for criminal law to be perceived as just, it cannot unjustly punish the conduct of individuals. If a Roma and a skinhead argue in a pub over a free table, and the consequence is a fight, it would not be just to qualify their conduct as a racist attack, since in a wider context it would then be possible to speak of a weakening of trust in the criminal law in certain parts of society. On the other hand, there will be resentment in the Roma or immigrant communities if they are the victims of assault by skinheads, who are then convicted of assault and battery without a racist motive being mentioned.
As is clear, one is treading on thin ice when attempting to demonstrate a racist motive, though this is the basis of racist violence.
In practice, it is possible to delineate three basic types of racist violence: racist violence “as a mission”, “as a reaction”, and “for fun”.

Racist violence as a mission is carried out mainly by members of extreme right-wing or neo-Nazi groups, which regard such attacks as a duty. Such attacks are approved by their organisation, which frequently espouses them. It is to the detriment of criminal policy that the perpetrator of such an act is fêted by their organisation and their conviction is then regarded as a kind of heroism, on the basis of which the perpetrators of the attack rise up through the ranks of the organisation. It is clear that the educational function of imprisonment in such a case is zero, and further attacks can be expected after the release of such a perpetrator. Another sad fact of such racist violence is the endeavour of young members of these groups to acquire prestige – it is unfortunately not unusual for copycat attacks of well-known acts of violence to be carried out in an effort to become more visible, since the mass media and politicians devote quite a lot of attention to racist violence, and so the racist attack and the method by which it was carried out is quickly known throughout society. There are no such cases in the Czech Republic as of yet, but in Germany, for instance, arson attacks on the Turkish community have been reported.

Another fact is related to racist violence as a mission, and this is that skinheads have a developed international network in an organised form. Their events are often international meetings, for instance concerts given by neo-Nazi groups held in the Czech Republic. Such events are conceived as private happenings, and so the police can do nothing but patrol the surrounding area in an effort to prevent violence.

It is also typical of racist violence as a mission that it is carried out in a territory with no link to the perpetrator. We could thus imagine a situation in which a group of skinheads set out to cause trouble in Chánov, because they know that there is a high concentration of Roma there, and attack their houses without ever having visited the area previously. These factors complicate the investigation of criminal acts linked with racist violence.

The activities of extreme right-wing groups, which includes skinheads, is systematically monitored within the Czech Republic and on an international level. At each regional police station, one person has the job of dealing with this problem. The issue also falls under the remit of the Institute of Criminology and Social Prevention, which, on the basis of specific cases and criminal theory, attempts to find the optimum resources in the fight against it. Every year, the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic issues a report on extremism in the Czech Republic, in which skinhead organisations are featured.

In simple terms, we can say that the bodies active in criminal proceedings have the least problem demonstrating that the perpetrator had a racist motive in the case of this kind of racist violence, since the perpetrator themselves does not only not hide the fact, but is very often proud of it. On the other hand, from the point of view of general criminology, if the perpetrator does not boast of their crime, the work of investigators is made significantly more complex, since there is no given relationship of the perpetrator to either the place or the victim of the attack.

The second type of racist violence is “as a reaction” . In comparison with the first type, where the perpetrator has no relationship to the scene of the crime, a personal link to the place involved is typical of the perpetrator. They themselves understand their attack as a reaction to an event provoked at some point in the past by the community of the victim. However, it is not unusual for no specific act to have taken place when a perpetrator is guilty of violence which they understand as a reaction to a possible threat. Nevertheless, in both cases there is an attempt on the part of the perpetrator to “protect” their territory against the danger which, in their opinion, the members of different communities represent.

Although in this case criminal acts are involved (depending on the specific circumstances, assault and battery, grievous bodily harm, etc.), they should not only be resolved by bodies active in criminal proceedings, but teachers, social workers, non-governmental organisations, and other subjects operating in the specific locality should also be involved. It is crucial to resolve the relationships between communities and remove the mutual distrust and feeling of threat, often resulting not from personal experience but established stereotypes.

The last type of racial violence is violence “for fun” . This covers the attacks of individuals who wish to draw attention to themselves without belonging to a network of extremist groups. These people yearn for the interest of newspapers or are simply attempting to shock. Another characteristic of this type of racial violence is that the perpetrator acts spontaneously, simply availing themselves of an opportunity without having prepared or planned the attack in advance. Often, the perpetrator does not even have any defined racist opinions, but act impulsively on the basis of a conviction that, say, Roma people represent a problem group of the population (in the Czech Republic; in other European countries, this may involve communities of immigrants).
It is clear that, in the case of this type of violence, as in the previous, it depends on the specific circumstances whether an investigation can be launched which will assume a racist subtext to the criminal act. There is another latent danger of this type, which is that people have the tendency to make light of such attacks, to regard them leniently as a prank, and thus to rationalise them.
If we were to regard attempts at racial violence through the eyes of the victim, what kind of approach to the attacks is adopted by the general public is crucial, especially by politicians and the mass media, who determine the mood of society as a whole.

In the case of racial violence “as a mission”, the immediate repugnance of the public is expressed after the attack, be this in the form of newspaper articles, news flashes, interviews with politicians in the mass media or demonstrations organised by NGOs, which is an important psychological moment in the community of the victim, since it affirms that society condemns the act and is on their side. An example of this would be the murder of the Sudanese student in Prague in 1998, or the case of the drowning of Helena Biháriová in Vrchlabí, where in fact strong protests on the part of the government put pressure on the investigators to find a racist motive, though without success. Taking an average sampling of the population, it would be difficult to find someone who approves or condones a racist murder.
However, in the case of the remaining types of racist violence, the community of the victim cannot expect similar satisfaction. On the contrary, the general public (the mass media, politicians) attempt to explain the facts of the case rationally. In cases of racial violence “as a reaction”, it has very often been argued that there is too high a concentration of Roma/immigrants in the locality in question, or that their ability to integrate is very low and that they do not try hard enough, etc. This then provokes in the communities of the victims an even greater feeling of isolation from the majority society and lack of trust in it, which can contribute to attempts to achieve justice through retaliatory acts of a criminal character. By the way, were we to apply the same logic to burglary, we would hear statements like “well, it’s no surprise really, there was simply too much money in the bank”, or as far as the theft of mobile telephones is concerned, “if you’re going to carry a mobile telephone you simply have to expect to be mugged for it”. Would we be satisfied with such an approach being presented by society?

The last point I want to mention in relation to the dialogue is the insufficient level of empathy of bodies active in criminal proceedings, as well as in the general public, to the communities of victims. For us, the members of the majority population, it is very difficult to imagine that we could be victims of violent criminal acts such as assault and battery or even murder, simply on the basis of the way we look (we could experience such a feeling to a lesser extent, for instance, at a Tunisian market stall, where the attempt is always being made to get money out of white tourists). If a racially motivated murder takes place, which since 1989 has already happened several times in the Czech Republic, it causes waves of panic in Roma communities; Roma parents refuse to send their children to school, a Roma militia is created, etc. The representatives of the majority regard these reactions very insensitively, perceiving them as being hysterical, underestimating the fear which reigns in these communities. This again creates the impression in these communities that support is simply not forthcoming from the majority population. For this reason, a model of “community policing” has been brought to the Czech Republic from abroad, the basis of which is the engagement of an “interface” officer from the ranks of ethnic minorities (Roma or Vietnamese), who helps the police in the locality in question.

• Stories and examples

Racist violence as a mission
The murder of Tibor Berki can be regarded in this light, which was committed on 13 May 1995 in Žďár nad Sázavou, when three skinheads burst into the house of a Roma family and began to destroy the furniture. When Tibor Berki, the owner of the house and the father of the family, attempted to intervene, one of the skinheads hit him on the head with a baseball bat in front of his wife and children. After being taken to hospital, Tibor Berki died of bleeding in the brain some three hours after the skinheads had entered his home. The Berki family had been popular in Žďář, even amongst the majority society, and the perpetrator and victim had never met before. Zdeněk Podrázký, 20 at the time he committed the murder, was sentenced to 12 years for the murder of Tibor Berki. The murder was condemned by the public and the mass media as a senseless and brutal act, a point pressed home by the fact that the victim was a “respectable” Roma man, who was employed and had a family.

Racial violence as a reaction
I believe that the case of the drowning of Tibor Daniel can be deemed a case on the boundaries between the types of racist violence “as a mission” and “as a reaction”. On 24 September 1993, a meeting of skinheads was held in Písek. The skinheads came from far afield. A week prior to the event, a group of Roma allegedly attacked Czech participants in a dance held not far from Písek. The group of skinheads began to harass several Roma which it encountered in Písek, and forced them to jump into the Otava, saying that it was a retaliatory act. They did not allow them out of the river and prevented passers-by from helping them. As a result, seventeen-year-old Tibor Daniel died. These Roma had not been in the village where the dance was to be held. At the time of the attack, there was a special police support present, because the skinhead meeting was being monitored. The general public took a reserved attitude to this case, as it was most often presented as a prank with tragic consequences, and the fact was emphasised that traces of toluene were found in the victim’s body. The court did not demonstrate a racist motive in the first instance, and the perpetrators got away with a conditional sentence. The regional court then returned the matter for investigation, but it was still found to be a combination of infelicitous coincidences. Only after the Supreme Court granted a complaint for a breach of the law submitted by the Minister of Justice, Ms. Parkánová, and instructed that the proceedings be restarted, was the case deemed to have been murder. The Supreme Court sent three skinheads to prison for 8 and 6.5 years, since it had to take into account the fact that at the time the crime was committed, they were still minors.

• Sources

References:

Allport, G. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books.

Council of Europe (1996). Tackling racist and xenophobic violence in Europe, Review and practical guidance, Community relations.Strasbourgh: Council of Europe Publishing.

Council of Europe (1997).Tackling racist and xenophobic violence in Europe: case studies, Community relations. Strasbourgh: Council of Europe Publishing.

Mezinárodní úmluva o odstranění všech forem rasové diskriminace ( zákon č. 95/1974 Sb.).

Rámcová úmluva o ochraně národnostních menšin (zákon č. 96/1998 Sb.)

Trestní zákon (zákon č.140/1961 Sb. ve znění pozdějších předpisů).

Trestní řád (zákon č. 141/1961 Sb. ve znění pozdějších předpisů).

Zákon o přestupcích (zákon č. 200/1990 Sb. ve znění pozdějších předpisů).