As in other European countries, the Czech Republic also devotes attention is to the extremist issues and their manifestations in society. Since its establishment the Czech Republic has applied an uncompromising attitude towards all manifestations of racial, ethnic, social and other kinds of intolerance.
The development of this situation has been described in regular Government reports which also provide detailed information on the activities of the state bodies suppressing extremism.
"The Report on Extremism in the Czech Republic" (hereinafter "Report") was produced by the Ministry of Interior together with the Ministry of Justice. However, the Report is conceived chiefly on the basis of the data from the representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, the Supreme State Prosecutor’s Office, the Foreign Relationship and Information Office, the Czech Intelligence Service, the Czech Government Human Rights Council (the Human Rights Department of the Czech Government Office), the Czech Government Nationality Council, and the inter-ministerial committee for Roma community matters (task force groups for security issues). The Report’s content was also consulted with the academic representatives whose expertise is extremism.1
"Report" is the consensual output of a wide range of state administration bodies, which encounter the issue in question.
The aim of this report is to provide summary information on extremist issues in the Czech Republic and their impact on internal security and public order in 1999, to address potential risks, which should be devoted special attention, and to assess the efficiency of measures adopted by Government Resolution No. 720/1999. The evaluation of meeting the tasks contained in the Annex to Government Resolution No. 720/1999 is incorporated into the content of the individual Chapters of this Report. The task’s description is always included in a relevant footnote.
This information is to be a basis for political decision-making at the Government level.
The authors endeavoured to make "Report" more comprehensive and its diction more balanced. And thus corrected, it’s to date the selective informative nature in relation to the extremist scene. Some civic associations or political parties registered with the Ministry of Interior, which were in the talked about in a general level in the former reports as anti-establishment registered organisations, are now directly named.2 This approach is of a predominantly preventative nature (both towards to the public and towards those organisations’ members), and therefore such publicising should not be perceived as scandalising those organisations nor as the effort to make their members criminals. The main intent is to involve all organisations, where there are well-founded suspicions of extremism in the sense in which this expression is defined and used in this Report. Merely mentioning a registered organisation in the report on extremism does not have any legal consequences for it. The Governmental bodies are ready to discuss with all those organisations whether their inclusion to the Report is appropriate or not.
So far,the public has only been provided with information which the organisations present "about themselves" which show how they want to be seen and what role they try to play. The information on how the state bodies perceive such associations and their activities should contribute to more objective information of the population. And this is the sense of the newly decided approach. It is an essential part of the prevention of extremism as such.3 Correctness of this approach can be proven by stimulating and the unambiguous approach of the German state bodies to extremism. 4
Mainly right-wing extremist supporters of skinhead movements followed by left-wing extremists known as "the anarcho-autonomous movement" were involved in offences of an extremist nature.5 No terrorist crimes were committed in connection with extremism. The information confirming offences committed by sects was not proven either. The relevant state bodies, regarding state security, need to protect the current constitutional establishment and also pay attention to the activities of organisations which profess an active return to the totalitarism before 1989 or to its more contemporary authoritative modification. The supporters of such movements do not commit any criminal offences, however there are serious concerns relating to their subversion activities resulting from, apart from other things, initiation of social tension in regions. This remains a problem.