Midtown Blogger/Manhattan Valley Follies: Prague Post

Friday news briefing — Aug. 7, 2015

Category: Czech News

Published: 07 August 2015

Written by Czech News Agency

Hits: 34

Former Education Minister Marcel Chládek.Photo: © Marcel Chládek / Senat.cz

+/- FONT:

Former education minister to work for Czech football; South Bohemia police detain 26 refugees, probably Afghans; Czech Police investigate anti-immigrant posters

Former education minister to work for Czech football

Former Czech education minister Marcel Chládek, who was dismissed in June over his alleged mobbing of the ministry employees, was appointed the general manager of national teams and academies of the Czech Football Association (FAČR) today.

In his new post, Chládek (senior government Social Democrats, CSSD), 47, will lead negotiations on behalf of the state, regions and towns and secure optimal conditions for the development of the elite football youth.

“I consider it a big commitment. Our task is to provide young talents with suitable conditions for their growth so that the national team had a perspective of success at least on the European level in ten years,” Chládek said in a press release.

Chládek worked as a football referee in the past.

He joined the ČSSD in 2004. He was a ČSSD senator and deputy to the Central Bohemia regional governor in 2008-2014.

He occupied the post of the education, sports and youth minister in the current centre-left government of Bohuslav Sobotka (ČSSD) from January 2014 until his dismissal in June 2015.

As minister, Chládek strongly supported football and sport in general.

South Bohemia police detain 26 refugees, probably Afghans

The police detained 26 illegal refugees in a lorry near Horní Vltavice, south Bohemia, last night, who probably came from Afghanistan and were heading for Germany, foreigner police officers told reporters today.

A total of 15 men, four women and seven children were travelling in the lorry driven by a man from Slovakia.

This has been the first case of a quite high number of refugees detained in south Bohemia.

“The persons were travelling under inhuman conditions. They had water, but we did not find any food there,” South Bohemia foreigner police section chief Jiří Stuchlý said, reminding of a very hot weather on Thursday.

The migrants were in a tight space designated for cargo in the lorry. “Some of them were sitting on the floor,” Stuchlý said.

The police are now waiting for an interpreter since none of the refugees is able to communicate in English.

The foreigner police say the migrants were probably being transported to Passau, Germany.

The driver is being questioned. “If found guilty, he faces up to five years in prison,” Stuchlý said.

About 100 foreigner, riot and traffic police officers are monitoring the situation in south Bohemia a day, not only in the border areas.

They have been checking the main road connections and railway lines for six weeks. The checks will continue, Stuchlý said.

Before the raid near Horní Vltavice, the police detained only one migrant, a woman from Nigeria travelling from Italy to Prague, in south Bohemia.

The numbers of detained illegal migrants have been rising in the CzechRepublic since mid-June when the police tightened. Citizens of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan prevail among the detained immigrants.

Most of them get to the CzechRepublic from Greece via Hungary and Austria and almost all say their target country is Germany.

Czech Police investigate anti-immigrant posters

The Czech police are investigating, on the basis of a legal complaint, whether a series of allegedly anti-immigrant posters that the National Democracy ultra-right extra-parliamentary party has released do not violate law, the iDNES.cz. server reported today.

The posters, for instance, contain an appeal for “shooting the black,” which is also a Czech idiom for “hitting the bull's eye.”

“It is quite apparent about whom the texts are, since the party is speaking about immigrants in general term as about 'intruders' or 'horny Negroes',” the server writes .

“We have received a report in connection with these posters. Now detectives will be looking into them to find out whether the respective articles in the penal code have been violated or not,” iDNES.cz cites Prague police spokesman Jan Danek as saying.

The server writes that National Democracy chairman Adam B. Bartoš has been questioned by the police over legal complaints four times of late.

According to the police website, the police, for instance, deal with a complaint against Bartoš over his speech in which, holding a hangman's rope in his hand, he proclaimed that if the government did not act (against immigrants), he would do so.