Czech president warns of neo-Nazism threat

At a memorial ceremony on Saturday that commemorating the 74th year of extermination of the Lidice village which was obliterated by the Nazis in 1942, Czech President Milos Zeman warned that neo-Nazism is starting to threaten inconspicuously the Czech society.

Zeman said that Lidice tragedy binds people not only to remember the past but also to actively fight against neo-Nazism, which has been spreading in the country under various pretexts.

This ideology is based on racial hatred, rejection of pluralism and forcing physical and opinion uniform upon people, said the president.

Zeman said that neo-Nazis also benefit from the reluctance of democratic politicians who are incapable of facing current problems.

He said if someone adores war criminal and mass murderer in the World War II, he objectively becomes a neo-Nazi.

Bans are no effective solution, said Zeman.

"Let's promise right here, in the village of Lidice, we will not only remember the past, because it is not enough. We will also actively act against those who are in our territory again beginning to spread neo-Nazism under various pretexts," Zeman was quoted as saying.

Officials, ambassadors, representatives of regional and town governments, churches and civic associations, witnesses and other guests at Lidice commemorated the 74th anniversary of the day when the Nazis burned this Central Bohemian village down in retaliation for the assassination of Nazi Deputy Reichsprotector Reinhard Heydrich by Czechoslovak paratroopers.

All the man in the village were shot dead, women sent to a concentration camp, most of the children were sent to the gas chambers and several of them were sent for re-education in Germany. Endit