Formal sentencing of the editor of the Czech anti-Semitic weekly Politika has been postponed after the defendant’s attorney alleged that the judge was biased against his client.
Josef Tomas began publishing the anti-Semitic Politika in 1991. That same year, several people, including members of Parliament, began lodging complaints against Tomas.
The police investigation of the case lasted nearly two years.
On Jan. 14, District Court Judge Helena Kralova, taking advantage of a newly introduced section of the Czech penal code, issued a written condemnation of Tomas without hearing the case in open court.
Kralova sentenced him to five years’ probation after suspending a one-year prison sentence. The judge also imposed a three-year ban on the publication of Politika.
Last week, Tomas appealed the sentence, and when Kralova rejected the objection that she was biased, Tomas’ attorney filed a complaint that will have to be ruled upon by the Superior Court of the city of Prague.
In December 1992, Tomas was obliged to interrupt publication of Politika after he was criticized for publishing a “partial list of Jews and Jewish half-breeds in contemporary Czech culture.” The list was accompanied by an article written by Tomas railing against “Slavs from around the Jordan River” who live in what was then Czechoslovakia spreading the “smell of garlic” and “plundering the country.”
The list included the names of 160 leading Czech writers, musicians, actors and filmmakers of Jewish as well as non-Jewish origin. Among those on Tomas’ list were writer Vaclav Havel, now president of the Czech Republic, who is not Jewish; Czech-American film director Milos Forman; and Deputy Culture Minister Michal Prokop.
After two years of investigations, the public prosecutor charged Tomas in February 1993 with inciting ethnic and racial hatred, abusing citizens because of their nationality, race or convictions and for propagating ideas aimed at the suppression of civil rights and liberties.
Although Politika has been forced to suspend publication, another paper, the Czech monthly Dnesek (Today), has appeared to fill the vacuum.
Dnesek, which is edited in the Czech city of Brno by Frantisek Kasparek, carries articles by former contributors to Politika and by others on the right wing.
In a letter written in December to government, parliamentary and judicial officials, the Federation of Jewish Communities of the Czech Republic called for the speedy introduction of legislation that would impose stiff legal penalties on those inciting racial and religious hatred.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
