Czech police have requested that parliament strip Tomio Okamura,  chairman and MP for the far-right SPD party, of his parliamentary immunity so he can be interrogated over the SPD’s recent anti-immigration campaign.

Last summer and autumn ahead of regional and Senate elections in the country, the SPD launched a billboard campaign “against the EU migration pact” depicting a black man with a blood-stained shirt and holding a knife accompanied by the message “discrepancies in healthcare won’t be solved by "surgeons” from import".

Police submitted a request to the parliament on January 7, Jan Daněk, Prague’s police spokesman, confirmed for Czech Radio, adding that it is “in connection with the case of the summer billboard campaign, which we are addressing for inciting hatred towards a group of people, or curtailing of their rights and freedoms”.

Parliamentary Speaker Markéta Pekarová Adamová (TOP 09 party) told Czech Radio the request had not yet arrived.

Okamura, who has mixed Czech and Japanese parentage, responded swiftly and called a press conference at which he pointed a finger at TOP 09 politician Jiří Pospíšil for filing a criminal complaint against him and his party.

Last year, Roma NGO Romea, Cyril Koka, coordinator for minorities in the Central Bohemian region, and others filed a criminal complaint against Okamura, the SPD and its allied far-right parties Tricolour and PRO over a billboard which depicts two Czech Roma school boys smoking a cigarette accompanied by the message “support only for families, where kids observe school attendance!”

At a press conference, Okamura said: “Of course, they won’t silence me, I will never step aside and will fight for a safe Czech Republic, because I don’t want any illegal African and Islamic migrants here.”

“The government is trying to criminalise opposition for opinions. This attempt to silence me is an attack on freedom of speech. They want to prosecute me for a billboard, with which we made fun of their lies and hypocrisy,” he said, reiterating his party’s earlier claims that the campaign is not racist and is “an allegory of the development in Czechia and irresponsible decisions” of Prime Minister Petr Fiala’s centre-right government.

The SPD has been trying to maintain its position as the leader of the far-right and anti-EU political spectrum at a time when several anti-establishment parties have been surging in the polls.

Besides the SPD allies from the regional election campaign, Tricolour and PRO, the far-right includes also the STAČILO! (It’s been enough!) list led by the Czech Communist Party, as well as the anti-Green Motorists, which joined forces with the populist Přísaha (Oath) party for the European Parliamentary elections.

While SPD is the only parliamentary party among these groups, the three latter registered gains in the EU elections, as well as the later Czech regional and Senate elections, and are gearing up for the national elections this autumn, which opinion polls predict are set to be won by the populist ANO party of billionaire Andrej Babiš, though it is likely to need allies from the extremist fringe or mainstream parties in order to hold a majority.

ANO has dominated national polls over the past two years and also openly flirted with the far-right and anti-EU electorate. In June, ANO was one of the founding parties of the Patriots for Europe EP fraction, along with Hungary’s radical right-wing leader Viktor Orbán and Austria’s far-right leader Herbert Kickl. 

In December, the Prague 7 district court ruled the SPD could be labelled extremist although the ruling is not in legal power. By contrast with the previous Social Democrat-led interior ministry, the current ministry does not include the SPD among the extremist parties it reports on every year. Nevertheless, Czech police continue to take a tougher stance against open racism in the country than before.

A political scientist focusing on extremism, Aleš Michal, told Czech Radio in an interview this month that SPD could be described as “radical” given its willingness to cooperate with other parties and that “between 20-25%” of Czechs seek radical or even extreme politics.