Czech police say they have started criminal proceedings against 15 women believed to be been part of a women’s neo-Nazi organization.
The special police squad for dealing with organized crime (ÚOOZ) said that the women, aged between 21 and 32, participated in and helped to propagate the ideas of the neo-Nazi Resistance Women Unity (RWU) movement, the non-registered women’s offshoot of the Nazi group National Resistance (Národní odpor).
Some of the movement’s actions were aimed at providing help to those members of the broader neo-Nazi movement who have already been jailed, the police said.
“In the case that guilt is proved, they could face up to eight years loss of freedom,” the police squad said in a news release on Monday, adding that the 15 women had not been detained in custody.
Earlier this month, police officers arrested and charged Michaela Dupová, a member of the Workers’ Social Justice Party (Dělnická strana sociální spravedlnosti – DSSS) and a former leader of the RWU, for wearing tattoos of banned extremist symbols. She faces up to three years in prison for promoting and supporting a movement aimed at suppressing human rights and freedoms, the news server Romea.cz reported.
The RWW was created in 2007 and harks backs to similar organizations in Nazi Germany stressing the purity of the so-called Aryan race, according to the police unit. Speeches at a May Day RWU rally in 2008 attacked immigrants and refugees, whom speakers claimed to be pumping social benefits; described the then government as a corrupt cesspit; and berated multiculturalism and moves to liberalize drugs laws.
The police said they began their investigation in September 2009. The case against the 15 women is being coordinated by the state prosecution service based in the northern city of Děčín, an area of high racial tension where there were numerous clashes and demonstrations against the Roma minority over the summer.