(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has called on the Czech authorities to take firm action in response to a violent attack on Tomas Nemecek, editor-in-chief of the weekly “Respekt”, on 17 January 2004. Nemecek, aged 30, was attacked with tear gas and then kicked and punched in the head by two men after leaving a shop near […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has called on the Czech authorities to take firm action in response to a violent attack on Tomas Nemecek, editor-in-chief of the weekly “Respekt”, on 17 January 2004.
Nemecek, aged 30, was attacked with tear gas and then kicked and punched in the head by two men after leaving a shop near his Prague home. His assailants neither said anything to him nor did they rob him. He was hospitalised with injuries to his head and face, but his condition is not considered critical. Police have said they are investigating the incident.
“The authorities must react with the utmost firmness to this act of violence, which may constitute a direct attack on press freedom,” RSF said in a letter to Interior Minister Stanislav Gross. “We call on you to ensure that appropriate resources are deployed to identify and punish those responsible and, at this early stage of the investigation, not to rule out the possibility that the attack was linked to the victim’s work as a journalist,” the organisation added.
Marek Svehla, the weekly’s deputy editor-in-chief, told RSF, “The attack was obviously premeditated and it clearly [targeted] the newspaper.” He said it may have been prompted by several articles published in early January about a criminal gang operating in Most and Litvinov, in northern Bohemia, and the police’s failure to take action against the gang.
On 18 January, a journalist with the weekly, who did not want to be identified, received a telephone call from a gang member threatening to attack him if he wrote an article. Svehla voiced scepticism about the local police’s ability to deal with these gangs and said he would like the case to be assigned to a special unit that combats organised crime.
The newspaper has also published investigative reports on such sensitive issues as a neo-Nazi group’s racist behaviour towards Roma people in the eastern region of Ostrava, arms trafficking, and the privatisation of coal mines in northern Bohemia.
