Czech far-right party linked to BNP runs Euro election TV ads demanding 'Final Solution' to gypsy problem

Daily Mail by Allan Hall | Friday, 22 May 2009 | Click here for original article

A far-right party in Czech Republic which demanded a 'final solution' to the issue of gypsies has been exposed as having strong links with the BNP in Britain.

The National Party in Prague stunned mainstream politicians and viewers with an electioneering ad using Nazi-era rhetoric that called for a 'final solution to the gypsy issue'.

In WW2 the highest echelons of the Nazi party in Germany sought the 'final solution to the Jewish question' – the euphemism which covered the industrial-scale slaughter of six million men, women and children in the extermination camps.

In the tasteless Czech ad the camera pans over dishevelled and dirty-looking Roma women and children, intended to show them in the worst possible light, before a voice-over says: 'We call for final solution to the gypsy issue'.

There were also slogans on screen such as 'Stop black racism,' 'No favouring of Gypsies', and 'We don't want black racists among us'. Czech bigots routinely refer to Roma people as blacks.

The Czech government has expressed outrage over the broadcast of the ad made for the forthcoming EU elections – and pledged that it would not be repeated – as the group’s links with the British National Party were revealed.

BNP leader Nick Griffin, in a bid to cement ties with proto-fascist parties across Europe ahe ad of EU polling, spoke at a rally of the tiny anti-immigration, anti-Muslim and anti-Romani National Party (NS) by addressing its rally to celebrate Czech independence in the autumn of last year.

In his speech he railed against the accession of Turkey to the EU, saying that the introduction of millions of Muslims into the EU would 'drive down wages, living standards and increase taxes'.

Griffin's trip, accompanied by several BNP activists, followed an invitation to the NS leader, Petra Edelmannová, to the BNP's Red White and Blue festival in August 2008 in Denby, Derbyshire.

Edelmannova did not attend citing other commitments. Edelmannová was the brains behind the final solution TV ad and wrote a pamphlet last year which she had been intending to bring to Britain.

In it she stresses the case for 'repatriating the Czech Republic’s Roma population to India'.

BNP deputy leader Simon Darby conceded in a newspaper interview shortly afterwards that the phrase'final solution' was 'not exactly the best title for a document'.

But he added: 'There is a Gypsy problem there. There is a problem in this country as well.

'Some of the Travelling community have been here for a very long time. They keep themselves to themselves and sort out their own problems within their own communities. They have the same morals as me. I don't have a problem with them.'

He identifies the 'problem' as being foreign Roma who have immigrated into the UK since European enlargement, along with an undefined group of what he calls 'homegrown pseudo-Gypsies'.

After the video was shown on Wednesday night in Czech Republic – a country that suffered enormous losses under the Nazis – Czech TV spokesman Ladislav Sticha said that the law obliged it to broadcast the 'election clips exactly in the shape submitted by the parties, without altering them and without bearing responsibility'.

Politicians have said the ad will however be banned and there is also a movement in the parliament for an outright ban on the NS.