A-Infos (en) Czech, AFED: A3: Dangerous acquaintances - Is he going to take another stick at people who don't support the status quo? (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

After January 16, the amendment to the law on weapons and ammunition is 
to be discussed. In the media , a vague wording appeared that the 
removal (seizure) of a weapon may occur in case of "contact with 
extremists or ties to extremist groups". It is probably the proposed § 
123 h) and the justification: "if it follows from the opinion or 
information of a public authority that the person handling them poses a 
serious danger to internal order or security".
Let's take a closer and more extensive look at it. The term extremism is 
unknown in Czech law, only the Ministry of the Interior uses it to a 
certain extent, and this itself admits that the term is ambiguous. 
Within the framework of criminal acts, it operates with the term crimes 
with an extremist subtext. In his regular reports, he refers to everyone 
from the anarchist scene to the SPD to nature conservationists as 
extremists. In the latest annual report, it states that "not all 
extremist entities included in the Report were engaged in illegal 
activity in 2022". Therefore, it is not necessary to commit a 
misdemeanor or a crime to take away a weapon. Will an ideological crime 
be enough? And what can such an ideological crime be?

For example, the year 2016, when Igor Shevtsov was sentenced to a 
three-year ban on participation in sports, cultural and other social 
events of the anarchist movement, is an example. The agile clerk Tereza 
Kodeshová from the Probation and Mediation Service checked it and 
included everything she found on the website radar.squat.net among the 
anarchist events. "Problematic actions" also consulted with police 
officers from the "anti-extremist" department. Handing out hot food to 
the homeless proved to be the most dangerous, with the Food Not Bombs 
initiative being the most frequently mentioned. Yes, that is anarchist 
and therefore extremist. Because of this, she even turned to the leading 
"forensic expert on extremism" Miroslav Maresh, whom we quote from the 
article on Alarm: "Participation can be intended or unintended, when the 
accused, for example, switches communications and joins the action. At 
the same time, the participant may know that this is an anarchist event, 
or, according to the political scientist, he may not know it either. The 
anarchist character of the event itself can be given by its purpose 
serving the benefit of the anarchist movement, by the composition of the 
participants, or by the person or persons of the convenor. According to 
Maresh, the exact identification of a person's connection to the 
anarchist movement can be difficult because the movement is mostly 
informal. People who are not anarchists can come to an anarchist event, 
and anarchists, on the other hand, can participate in events that are 
not primarily anarchist."

Replace the word anarchist with the umbrella term extremist, and you'll 
see how vague the "links" to securing a gun can be. Will it be 
participating in a May Day demonstration, visiting a book fair, shaking 
hands at a concert or liking a post on social networks? We don't know. 
Tightening anything with reference to extremism is very tricky, and of 
course not only for anarchists, but for people of any political opinion. 
Times change and the tables can turn and what is considered the norm 
today will be extremism tomorrow and vice versa. Today, in connection 
with extremism, people talk mainly about the so-called anti-system scene 
consisting of various Rajchls and Lisks, about the established SPD and, 
of course, about the anarchist movement. But it could also happen that 
times change and Jana Cernochová loses her AR-15 or Roman Joch loses his 
revolver. And then after a while it somehow happens again.

Information about "detentions" would come from the police or 
intelligence services, the following is stated in the documents related 
to the law: ), from which it reasonably follows that the handling of 
weapons by such a person would threaten internal order or security." We 
have shown above what the police consider to be extremism. What the 
intelligence service will consider to be extremist, we will never know. 
Given that the BIS copies verbatim passages from the police report in 
its annual report, it won't be much different. Information from them is 
usually subject to secrecy, which basically makes any possibility of 
legal defense impossible. All they have to do is write that you are a 
danger to the democratic establishment, whatever that means.

Today, it is possible to obtain a gun by claim, after meeting all the 
requirements. This was not always the case, for example, before 1989. 
"This is how it worked under communism, when the law theoretically 
allowed the acquisition of weapons, but in reality Public Security 
decided on it based on free discretion," says Ministry of Interior 
expert Milena Backovská. But he clearly does not see his mouth when at 
the same time at the round table on the new law he defends the free 
discretion of the police or intelligence services. After all, they just 
changed their name!

Most other conditions, such as medical fitness or reliability and 
integrity, can be adjusted over time, you get a doctor's note, or the 
required time elapses, for example after an offence. However, we do not 
find anything like that in the case of detention of extremists. Will it 
be necessary to defend yourself in court or attend ideological trainings 
and get enough points in the test for serfdom and snobbery?

https://www.afed.cz/text/8090/a3-nebezpecne-znamosti
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