Miloš Zeman

Zeman on May 9, 2015, at a meeting with Putin at the Kremlin. Credit: Kremlin staff

Miloš Zeman is the third and current President of the Czech Republic, since 8 March 2013.

Although officially on the left-of-center, Zeman has clearly espoused an anti-immigrant and anti-Islam stance, and has been especially vocal since the start of the refugee crisis. In September 2016, The Guardian said of him that:

'The Czech president has unleashed a rhetorical fusillade against Muslim incomers of such intensity that it makes the anti-Islamic sentiments of Robert Fico, the Slovakian prime minister, and even Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister – who is holding a referendum next month aimed at establishing public opposition to accepting migrants – seem mild in comparison.'

Background

Zeman was born on 28 September 1944.

In 1968, during the Prague Spring, he became a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia but was expelled in 1970, because he disagreed with the party line on the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. In 1990 he then became a member of the Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD). In 1992, he successfully ran for the Chamber of the People of the Federal Assembly and was elected chairman of the party in 1993.

The ČSSD won the election in 1998 and Zeman became the Prime Minister of his own minority government, until April 2001. Zeman then retired and moved to live in the countryside (Vysočina Region). When his nomination for Czech president failed at the 2003 presidential election, due to party disunity, Zeman became an outspoken critic of his former party's leaders and eventually left the Czech Social Democratic Party on 21 March 2007, due to conflicts with the leader and chairman, Jiří Paroubek. In October 2009, he founded a new party, Party of Civic Rights – Zemanovci.

In January 2013, Zeman was elected as President of the Czech Republic with 54.8% of the popular vote. He is the first directly elected President in Czech history; both of his predecessors, Václav Havel and Václav Klaus, were elected by the Parliament.

Views

On Islam, Muslims and immigration

Zeman has warned that the Czech Republic – home to only 3,500 Muslims out of a population of 10.5 million, according to official figures – could be targeted in a jihadi attack and urged Czechs to arm themselves against what he referred to as a possible “super-Holocaust”. The concern is believed to have prompted the unprecedented introduction of metal detectors to screen the crowds of foreign tourists that visit Prague castle each day. The alarmist message is particularly striking because unlike most anti-immigrant politicians in western Europe, Zeman, 71, is a social democrat (and former communist) rather than a rightwinger, and the Czech Republic has been largely spared the waves of refugees that have swept into neighbouring Austria and Hungary en route to Germany.

Zeman sets out what he sees as the threat being posed by radical Islamists – and even “moderate” Muslims, who he says could be radicalised to commit terror attacks as ordinary Germans were once inspired to fanatically back Hitler.

“In the 30s, the overwhelming majority of Germans were decent people, the nation of Goethe and Schiller and so on,” he says. “In a few years, they became Nazis, even fanatic Nazis. And the radicalisation of the – till these times – moderate Muslim population might be like the case of the German population. It might be easier than the German population, [because] you have a very radical ideology based on a religion.”

calling Islam “a religion of death”

“You might say that Islamic migration is composed of peaceful people. Let me give you one example. The attitude of Islam – I do not speak about jihadists, I speak about Islam – towards women, half of the population. As you know, in the Qur’an, women is something like the inferior part of mankind.”

he had warned previously that Muslim immigrants would "respect Sharia instead of Czech laws" under which "unfaithful women will be stoned and thieves will have their hands cut off, and we'll be deprived of women's beauty, because they'll be veiled from head to toe". Women covering their face “would mean an improvement” for some, he said, “but there are few of them and I cannot see any such here.”

The president of the Czech Republic has claimed Muslim integration in Western Europe is “practically impossible”. said during a televised interview with tabloid newspaper Blesk that Islamic “culture” should not be taken into Europe, or else “it will end up like Cologne”, referring to the large number of sexual assaults on New Year's Eve in the German city. said: “The experience of western European countries which have ghettos and excluded localities shows that the integration of the Muslim community is practically impossible.”

“Let them have their culture in their countries and not take it to Europe, otherwise it will end up like Cologne,”

“I am not against migrants in my country from Ukraine, Vietnam, Russia, Belarussia, Serbia, and so on,” Mr Zeman added. “I am only against Islamic migration, because I think there is full incompatibility of culture — as one example only, the attitude of Islamic migrants to women. Completely different from European culture.”

Reactions to Refugee Crisis

Zeman on 5 May 2013. Credit: David Sedlecký

• In June 2015, Zeman stated: "If European countries accept a wave of migrants, there will be terrorist groups among them, of which also a Libyan minister has warned. By accepting the migrants, we strongly facilitate Islamic State’s expansion to Europe."[33]

• In December 2015, Mr Zeman claimed the large influx of refugees was an “organised invasion", urging the young asylum seekers to return to Iraq and Syria to “take up arms” and fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

He later said Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood was responsible for. He told Czech Radio earlier this month: "The Muslim Brotherhood cannot start a war against Europe, it doesn’t have the power, but it can prepare a growing migrant wave and gradually control Europe."

"The Muslim Brotherhood cannot start a war against Europe, it doesn't have the power, but it can prepare a growing migrant wave and gradually control Europe,"said Zeman claimed to have been tipped off about the secret plan by from two sources , "both Muslims and leading Arab politicians".

• Czech President Milos Zeman called for all economic migrants currently in the country to be deported to an uninhabited Greek island or to an empty part of northern Africa.

Mr Zeman told the Financial Times and two other media outlets in an interview the only solution to Europe’s migrant crisis was to deport those not fleeing war. “We are in Greece, and Greece has plenty of uninhabited islands, and big foreign debt. So if you have ‘hotspots’ in Greek islands, this would be a sort of payment of foreign debt,” Mr Zeman said. “I am for deportation of all economic migrants,” he added. “Of course I respect the cruelty of civil war in Syria, Iraq, and so on. But we do not speak about those people, we speak about economic migrants.”

Continued: estime qu’il existe un « lien fort » entre l’afflux de migrants et la « vague de djihadistes » en Europe. Pour le chef de l’Etat tchèque, il se trouve parmi les réfugiés des extrémistes qui pourraient radicaliser les « musulmans modérés » de la même manière que les nazis ont radicalisé l’Allemagne dans les années 1930. Miloš Zeman affirme également être persuadé que les personnes qui fuient la guerre ne représentent qu’un tiers des réfugiés. Les autres sont, toujours d’après lui, des « migrants économiques dont l’UE devrait se débarrasser ». Et ce notamment parce que la culture musulmane est incompatible avec la société européenne.

La proposition de Miloš Zeman a toutefois été refusée par le ministre des Affaires étrangères. Dans une émission diffusée à la Télévision tchèque dimanche, Lubomír Zaorálek a souligné qu’il ne s’agissait pas là de la position officielle de la politique étrangère tchèque : « On ne peut pas dicter aux Grecs qui placer sur leurs îles. De plus, beaucoup d’entre elles sont déjà surchargées. Nous n’allons donc pas recommander à quelqu’un d’accueillir des migrants. Ceci dit, il est vrai que l’Europe ne pourra pas accueillir un nombre illimité de réfugiés économiques. Aucun pays n’est en mesure d’absorber des quantités de migrants excessives, comme un million de réfugiés en Allemagne. »

Reactions to ISIS threat

Czech President Miloš Zeman addressed the UN General Assembly on the subject of terrorism on Wednesday, calling for a military strike against the “nerve center” of international terrorism. Mr. Zeman said the time had come to put to use article 47 of the UN Charter which enabled the creation of a joint military force to combat a global threat.

On the EU

the president’s Euroscepticism, manifested in his denunciation of EU sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Crimea. Zeman has demanded referendums on the Czech Republic’s membership of the EU and Nato, while insisting he would advocate staying in each.

The country’s need to remain in the EU, which it joined in 2004, is justified by “money, money, money”, he says, before launching into a brief and unmelodic rendition of Abba’s famous hit. “My cynical explanation is that we are not the net payer in the European Union. We get a huge amount of subsidies from European funds,” he says. “This is not the situation of British people, of course.”

The union, he says, is like a broken-down train described in an old Soviet joke about the collapse of communism. “The third part of the joke has the train with Brezhnev on board,” he explains. “He says, ‘comrades, if the train stops, we shall close the curtain and imitate that the train is still going on’. The European Union is the third part of this joke. They simply close the curtains and simulate that without any change of strategy, the European Union is going on.”

called for a referendum on his country’s membership in the EU and NATO. Although Zeman wants to remain in both organizations, he wants the public to have a chance to “express themselves.” In response to Zeman’s proposal, Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka’s office said that the government has no intention of holding a referendum.

On the US 2016 Elections

“I will not interfere with U.S. internal affairs,” Zeman said in a video interview on iDnes news portal on Tuesday. “I am just saying that if I were an American citizen, I would vote for Donald Trump.”

said the real-estate mogul is a better choice than Hillary Clinton, who would just continue the policies of Barrack Obama’s administration that turned the Middle East into a place full of “festering wounds.”

Responses to accusations of 'populism' and Islamophobia

• Zeman’s intemperate and, to many, downright offensive language has drawn accusations of populism and inevitable comparisons with the US Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump. He counters by citing Winston Churchill.

“Winston Churchill has been always a populist and he was right. And all who criticised him were wrong,” says Zeman. “What does it mean, a populist? It is a slogan, a label, nothing more.”

• while visiting the Zlín region, reacted to the accusation that he is an Islamophobe. He is apparently surprised, because he himself does not know what that “Islamophobia” actually is. “The term Islamophobia has never been properly defined. I speak against Islamic radicalism,” he explained during a visit to the company Kovarna Viva in Zlín.

“So, for the authors of this information, I have just one wish: that somebody will not cut their heads off [while they are] alive,” the President ended his speech.

the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance released a report sharply critical of Czech politicians. As the greatest Islamophobes in the Czech political arena, the report named Tomio Okamura and also President Miloš Zeman

Affiliations

On the International Students’ Day on 17 November 2015, which commemorated the closing of Czech universities by the Nazis in 1939, Zeman shared a platform with a Czech far-right party. And of the Czech Friends of the Earth, award-winning nature conservationists trying to protect a national park from illegal logging, he said he would treat them in a “good old medieval way: burn them, piss on them and salt them”

In November 2015 he attended a Prague rally by far-right anti-immigrant group Pegida, where he said that those opposed to immigration should not be branded racists and xenophobes. Speaking to a crowd this afternoon that included observers from Germany’s PEGIDA movement and Britain’s Tommy Robinson, president Miloš Zeman was a guest of the Czech political action group ‘Block Against Islam’.

• Bill Warner will be present at a conference on October 27 2016 in the Senate of the Czech Parliament under the auspices of President Zeman. The title is: “Europe, Immigration and Islam”.