Pro- and anti-immigrant groups have battle of words
Police separate groups of migration supporters, critics in Prague
Prague, July 18 (ČTK) — The police were forced to form a cordon in Prague's central Wenceslas Square today to separate the demonstrating opponents of immigration from a group of its supporters who got engaged in a stormy verbal clash.
The supporters of immigration met in the lower part of the square at 14:00, and a meeting of the critics was to start at the same place later three hours later.
However, some members of the former group returned to the site and blocked the way for the opponents of immigration who wanted to set off for a march through the city center.
The police solved the situation by creating a cordon marking a new route for the latter group to walk and circumvent the former group members who were blocking the street.
Before the latter demonstration started, the groups of immigration supporters and opponents attacked each other verbally. The police kept them separated from each other.
At the beginning, both groups included about a hundred people, but the anti-immigration rally, initiated by the extremist National Democracy movement, was finally joined by several hundreds of people.
"Give no chance to Nazis," "Sort out waste, not people," chanted the supporters of immigration.
"Nothing but the nation," "White N*gg*rs, it is you" and "Leave for Africa," were among the slogans chanted by the opponents of immigration.
Lawmaker Tomio Okamura, elected for the Dawn movement but now heading a splinter movement Freedom and Direct Democracy, labeled the present Czech politicians extremists and the government's policy extremist.
By starting to accept immigrants, the government acted against the interests of a majority of citizens. The immigrants will be jobless and will pose an endless economic burden for the Czech Republic, causing a social collapse, Okamura told the crowd.
Another speaker, National Democracy head Adam B. Bartoš, said the government withholds the truth by keeping silent on the fact that every immigrant accepted by Prague will be accompanied by his family.
He labeled refugees "aliens" and presented the costs the state will allegedly have to spend in connection with their acceptance.
"They are full of various diseases. If you want to provide medical treatment to them, the cost would reach billions of crowns," Bartoš said.
Later in the evening, the opponents of immigration arrived in front of the government seat where further speeches were made, slogans chanted, and several EU flags were burnt down.
In the afternoon, several dozens of supporters of the ultra-right Workers' Party of Social Justice (DSSS) demonstrated against immigration in the north Moravian capital of Ostrava and later in the nearby village of Vyšní Lhoty, where a facility for migrants waiting for transfer away from the Czech Republic is to be opened.
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