Skinheads arrested in Czech town

KOZOLUPY, Czech Republic, Nov. 21 (JTA) – A Czech human rights group has filed a complaint against local police for not intervening to end a concert organized by a neo-Nazi group. The Civic Solidarity and Tolerance Movement said the Nov. 10 concert was organized by a neo-Nazi organization called Blood and Honor. The event violated Czech law because some 800 skinheads attending it “supported and promoted a movement aimed at the suppression of people’s rights and freedoms,” the group added. “Police should have ended the event as soon as they heard chants of `Sieg Heil’ inside the hall,” said Ondrej Cakl, spokesman for the human rights group. Police in this western Bohemian town arrested seven skinheads outside the hall when they gave the Nazi salute, and have since arrested three more. A local political leader defended the police actions. “Police were extremely professional. Further intervention would have resulted in violence, and the damage would have been extensive,” Augustin Hrboticky, a state representative, told a Czech newspaper.