Police come under fire as major neo-Nazi concert held in South Bohemia

Police came under fire this weekend after allowing a major neo-Nazi concert to take place undisturbed. Several hundred police monitored the event but refused to intervene, despite convincing evidence that the law was being broken.

Photo: CTK

Saturday night's concert took place in the village of Krtetice, near the town of Strakonice. Around 500 skinheads from around Europe attended the concert, organised by two neo-Nazi organisations, National Resistance and Blood & Honour Division Bohemia Combat 18. Blood & Honour and Combat 18 are well-known hardcore neo-Nazi groups, and anti-Nazi activists say the event was the largest to be held in the Czech Republic this year.

The event was booked as a private wedding reception, but in the end it was several hundred young men with shaved heads and combat boots who turned up, rather than a bride and groom. TV cameras recorded them through the window of the club chanting racist slogans and shouting the Nazi greeting Sieg Heil, a criminal offence in the Czech Republic.

Photo: CTK

However the police claim to have seen nothing. A police spokesman told the media they had found no evidence law was being violated, and therefore there was no reason to intervene. However the spokesman added they'd also monitored the situation inside the club, and would be analysing the footage this week.

Anti-Nazi activists and many in media regularly complain that police let neo-Nazis gather freely. The police claim they can't intervene when the law isn't being broken, but activists claim that it's often the case that the TV cameras see skinheads giving the Nazi salute and shouting Sieg Heil, but policemen standing a few yards away see nothing.