Police act with impunity, says advocate for alleged victims of brutality at CzechTek

Scores of mostly young people were injured the last weekend in July as police in riot gear moved in to break up an annual free techno festival known as CzechTek. Nearly twice as many police were injured in the line of duty, but allegations of police brutality have dominated the headlines. Brian Kenety spoke about the issue with lawyer Jiri Kopal, whose pro bono organisation is representing several alleged victims of police brutality at CzechTek and is calling for the establishment of an independent body to address complaints against the police.

Demonstration in Ceske Budejovice, photo: CTK

"After the police intervention against the techno dancers in western Bohemia, we have [taken on] cases of a 14-year-old girl brutally pushed down by the police officer with a broken elbow and life-long consequences for her health. There's a man with an injured retina, also with life-long health consequences... Young men groundlessly injured by police truncheons, with broken fingers, ribs and hands; cars damaged by smoke bombs intentionally thrown by the police into those cars; a young woman hit five times by policemen and police detonators with tear gas, et cetera..."

Jiri Kopal is a co-founder of the League of Human Rights, a non-profit advocacy group based in Brno. He was honoured by the US embassy in Prague last year as the first recipient of the newly created Alice Masaryk Award for the promotion of human rights and civil liberties, and has worked on dozens of police brutality cases. Mr Kopal says that the problem is widespread, and that CzechTek only brought it to the forefront.

Jiri Kopal, photo: CTK

"We are working on everyday police brutality cases against Roma, foreigners, homeless people and different kinds of groups. So we know about the everyday police brutality, not only after such a [large-scale] intervention".

On orders from the Interior Minister, the police had used tear gas, water cannon and batons to end the CzechTek rave. Both houses of Parliament, the ombudsman's office and the police themselves have launched separate investigations into the intervention, which was called to protect the private property adjacent to the field CzechTek organisers had rented in Mlynec, a village near the German border.

Lawyer Jiri Kopal says that the state acted without jurisdiction to restrict the free movement of persons, and so encroached on rights guaranteed by the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Basic Freedoms, and erected an illegal barrier to lawfully leased land. Apart from filing criminal charges against the state and possibly individual police officers, he says the League of Human Rights will work with attorneys on civil suits and seek compensation for those injured in the police action.

But Mr Kopal says that an independent organ should be formed to handle complaints of police brutality, as establishing special parliamentary committees or other ad hoc investigatory bodies is politically driven and fails to address the larger human rights issue.

"What we have been working on for a number of years -along the lines of recommendations from the human rights committee of the United Nations, and monitoring by the Council of Europe and Amnesty International in London -- is to consult with the Czech state the possibility to have an independent mechanism dealing with police crimes and misdemeanours".

"The problem is that police act with impunity. If they have this feeling that they can violate human rights without any punishment then there will be no end to illegal police intervention and police brutality cases".