Delving into the clashes between Czech Roma and Ukrainian migrants this summer, one factor stands out: the role of disinformation in stoking anger.
Disinformation has been in the public eye for years in the Czech Republic, but the impact on minority communities had been largely hidden from wider attention until this past summer. In June, during a fireworks festival at the Brno reservoir, a Ukrainian man stabbed a young Roma man, who subsequently died.
Tensions between the Roma and Ukrainian communities have grown in recent years, particularly since the Russian invasion of Ukraine forced large numbers of refugees to flee to the Czech Republic. And the schism between these communities was only widened by the tragedy, as the killing led to anti-Ukrainian protests in several cities – some of which escalated into violence. Another consequence has been a proliferation of disinformation, clearly designed to manipulate both communities.
On 11 July, several hundred Roma congregated in Krupka, a small city in the economically distressed northwest of the country, protesting the lack of security the community faced after local Romani children were said to have been harassed by foreign nationals. Although police had already disproved the narrative that the perpetrators were Ukrainian, the claims continued to percolate through social media and right-leaning media outlets – assertions repeated at the demonstration.
The night after the assembly in Krupka, a small riot broke out in the nearby city of Bilina. News outlet Romea.cz reported that an argument between Ukrainian and Romani locals escalated into a street fight, culminating in several hundred Roma marching through the streets, reportedly chanting anti-Ukrainian slogans.
The same week, several dozen Romani people were filmed slowly marching through the streets of Brno, shouting anti-Ukrainian slogans. Eventually, they gathered in front of a residential hotel where foreigners often stay, continuing their chants.
This string of events “led to a curious situation when representatives of the Roma community and the Czech disinformation scene started to call each other ‘brothers,’ even though the disinformation scene has targeted Roma people for years with hostile narratives,” said Kristina Sefcikova of the Prague Security Studies Institute. PSSI is a public policy think tank focused on safeguarding the democratic institutions of Central and Eastern Europe from unconventional threats including disinformation.
From Hate Targets to Target Group
At these protests, some members of the Roma community echoed the anti-Ukrainian sentiments published by disinformation actors, both Czech-based and foreign. Tomas Scuka, a political scientist and civil society member of the Czech government’s Council for Roma Minority Affairs, and Michal Mizigar, a historian and Romani studies scholar, discussed this in an article published on Romea.
“In the cases where [this anti-Ukrainian sentiment] is happening, it is among that part of the population of Romani people who have fallen victim to pro-Russian propaganda, just like the majority-society members of the population here,” Scuka and Mizigar write.
The way these events were covered by the mainstream media, it may seem that the country’s Roma and Ukrainian communities are at war. Some Roma say their sentiments have not been accurately represented and that their grievances have been blown out of proportion and ascribed a disingenuous origin.
“We believe the reactions on social media to date are describing the anger and the lack of trust felt by Romani people in a quite superficial way,” Scuka and Mizigar wrote. “We believe this conflict would have escalated similarly even if the perpetrator had been a man of a different nationality, whether Czech, Hungarian, or Romanian.”
Lucie Fukova, the governmental commissioner for Roma minority affairs, has also been very active in the recent discourse surrounding Roma-Ukrainian interethnic relations. Addressing the origin of these tensions, she has reiterated that what people are witnessing between these communities should not be attributed to the presence of Ukrainian refugees in the Czech Republic, but rather the systemic mistreatment of Roma by the state. Still, these communities are not monolithic and harbor a wide range of individual opinions, some of which align with the anti-Ukrainian sentiment seen in the media. The Roma community is especially vulnerable to the effects of misinformation and disinformation – given statistically lower rates of education and the subsequent media illiteracy within the community – which inevitably leads to pockets of the Roma community internalizing the anti-Ukrainian rhetoric espoused by disinformation actors.
“There is tension in the Roma community, there is great frustration in it, which stems from the fact that Roma are labeled and treated as second-class citizens in this society on a daily basis. This is reflected in the mood among the Roma. And because of social networks, information on the internet, disinformation spreaders succeed in provoking anti-Ukrainian sentiments in the Roma community,” Fukova told an interviewer from Denik.cz in early July, days after a fight between Roma and Ukrainians in Pardubice sparked a large Roma demonstration in the city.
Not All Refugees Are Equal
These concerns were once again highlighted after the start of the war in Ukraine, when Roma and non-Roma Ukrainian refugees faced disparate treatment when fleeing to the Czech Republic.
By last summer, 350,000 Ukrainian refugees had been granted temporary protection in the Czech Republic. Hundreds of Roma from Ukraine, some bearing Hungarian passports, were temporarily housed in tent camps. Compared to their non-Romani counterparts, members of the Roma community faced unique challenges as refugees. The year “2022 saw double standards by Czech authorities towards the human rights of Romani, such as Roma war refugees from Ukraine who were stranded at train stations in Prague and Brno before temporary shelters were set up,” states a report by Freedom House.
The Council of Europe also addressed this disparity of treatment in a 2023 report, writing that “the treatment of Ukrainian Roma, which stands in contrast to that of other Ukrainian refugees … has highlighted the deep-rooted prejudices against Roma that still exist in Czech society.” This inequality of treatment, coupled with a susceptibility to disinformation, helped lay the ground for anti-Ukrainian sentiments to spread among portions of the community, as noted above.
The Czech Disinformation Arena
Speaking of last summer’s tensions, PSSI’s Sefcikova said, “This demonstrates the power of scapegoating, the manipulative technique of constructing an image of an entity, in this case, the Ukrainians, as somebody to blame for all and any problems.”
Both the Ukrainian and Romani communities are common targets for disinformation campaigns, given the underdeveloped media literacy, poverty, and social exclusion experienced by both groups. But this summer, members of the Romani community shifted from being the subject of disinformation to the target audience as well.
The narratives concerning Ukrainians spread throughout the Romani community matched remarkably well with the pattern of disinformation emerging from the Kremlin. One of the most common motifs espoused by the Kremlin and its satellites has been the claim that Ukraine fosters neo-Nazi ideologies, which echoed across the Czech media scene this summer.
“Although many of these actors use discourse that is in line with the Kremlin’s communication and objectives, most probably they just use it because it is an effective way to achieve their own ends … rather than that they are paid to spread such content by external actors,” Sefcikova said, describing disinformation in the country as “largely a domestic problem.”
Although there is no concrete evidence that the summer’s anti-Ukrainian incidents were coordinated by the Kremlin, she said, “any opportunities for undermining societal cohesion and mobilizing vulnerable groups do help the Kremlin’s cause, whether intentionally or not.”
A handful of disinformation purveyors in Czechia have been linked to Russia, however – either directly to the Kremlin or indirectly through their association with pro-Kremlin institutions and organizations.
One example of consistent pro-Kremlin bias is found in the media outlet Protiproud (“Against the current”). In its investigation of Protiproud’s founder Petr Hajek, the Seznam Zpravy media outlet presented evidence that Hajek had received large amounts of funding from an investment company closely associated with Ural, a Russian bank. Hajek was the press spokesman in the early 2000s for then-President Vaclav Klaus.
A handful of the most flagrant spreaders of disinformation, including Protiproud, were briefly blocked by the Czech domain registry Cz.Nic just after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“Hajek’s business was subsidized by tens of millions of crowns by a company connected to the Russian bank Ural, which is on the sanctions lists of several Western countries due to its proximity to the Putin regime,” Seznam Zpravy alleges. “The money came to Hajek from the investment company Invest & Property Consulting (IPC)” – itself under sanctions, in part because it voiced support for the Russian war in Ukraine.
IPC also invested heavily in the publishing house Ceska citadela, another source of pro-Russian views, journalists from Hospodarske noviny and Aktualne.cz reported in 2022. Their article also noted the Czech government hybrid threat center’s description of Hajek as a “Kremlin mouthpiece” and backer of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Despite bans in Europe on Kremlin-sponsored outlets such as Sputnik, many others operating in the Czech Republic continue to act as unwitting or witting armatures to Russian propaganda, assisting in the dissemination of pro-Kremlin narratives.
Government Intervention and Its Critics
Non-profits, Romani community associations, and government ministries have gotten involved as tensions within the two communities continue to grow.
Roma minority affairs commissioner Fukova has indicated plans to create a communications manual to aid municipalities with conflict prevention and establish a broad-based group to prevent and de-escalate prejudicial violence. She also made clear the government’s pledge to prevent radicalization of society as a whole and strengthen its resistance to disinformation.
The Roma Minority Affairs Commission has not been the only government body to address the problem of disinformation. The Ministry for Regional Development recently revised its methodologies, seeking to stem the funding of conspiracy and disinformation websites. Under this new strategy, state companies are instructed to avoid advertising on websites known to spread disinformation.
The government solutions have not been without their criticisms, though. And some actions taken earlier this year have stymied the government’s capacity to adequately respond. In February, the position of government representative for media and disinformation was abolished and the responsibilities were allocated to the national security adviser, whose office has been slow to act, Sefcikova charged.
“The [national security] adviser clearly stated that no action plan [on disinformation] is being prepared at this point and it is not needed, which was reiterated by Prime Minister Petr Fiala. The problem is, disinformation became a highly politicized topic and it seems that currently, there is no political will to crack down on this issue,” she said.
Although the cancellation of the position was met with criticism, the media representative was not very successful while the position was active, Sefcikova continued.
“The representative’s mandate did not include enough capacities nor resources to bring about the needed change. Moreover, the communication of his and his team’s role was not very successful, which led parts of the public to perceive them as a censorship unit, touching upon the sensitive issue of freedom of speech,” she said.
The methodological revision by the Regional Development Ministry was also criticized for solving a problem that no longer exists, according to a PSSI study co-authored by Sefcikova.
The ministry’s recommendation that state companies avoid placing ads on websites known to spread disinformation was a positive step, the report said, but a step too late, “considering that such websites are not the main disinformation platform anymore. Processes and competencies allowing quicker responses therefore need to be put in place.”
Non-Profit and Community Solutions
Alongside the government initiatives, several non-profits and community associations have come to the aid of the Romani community, including IQ Roma Servis and Romodrom.
“Besides traditional media literacy activities, Czech civil society has also been active in engaging with the private sector about the issue of advertising placed, often unknowingly, in online media that spread disinformation,” Sefcikova said. “For example, our partner Nelez brings together over 200 partners from the private sector as a network of responsible advertisers, ad creators, and tech companies. PSSI’s research has proven that ad revenue is declining as a source of money among these media, also thanks to the activities of civil society and growing responsibility among the private sector. There are at least two websites known for spreading disinformation which completely stopped their operation, listing declining ad revenue as one of the main reasons,” she said.
Disinformation continues to accompany avoidable social tensions in the Czech Republic, as producers and spreaders of fake or dubious information exploit and misrepresent the emotions of disenfranchised groups. Although the government has made some headway, formally addressing the problem, there is still much work to be done. A growing number of non-profit and community groups are also continuing to assist in the healing process, trying to ameliorate the impact of disinformation within these communities and beyond.
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Richard Golbeck is a Canadian journalist based in Prague. With previous experience working as a political analyst and in non-profit organizations, he now writes about politics and freedom of the press in Central and Eastern Europe.
