Expressions such as God, the nation, Christian values and claims to be protecting the values of civilisation are often used to hide shoots of dangerous evil, President Andrej Kiska told representatives of Churches and religious societies in a New Year speech delivered on Thursday. He went on to say that these shoots of evil include fascism, neo-Nazism and hatred of people of different faiths, races and nationalities.
The president believes it is everyone's duty to choose where they stand and where their boundaries should be. "I've called on politicians in this regard, I'm encouraging people, and I'm most urgently asking you to do the same," he told the representatives of Churches and religious societies on Thursday.
At the coalition parties' press conference held on the very same day, the governing coalition condemned the comments made by People's Party-Our Slovakia MP Stanislav Mizik on Facebook on January 10. Mizik took potshots at President Andrej Kiska for bestowing state accolades on "Jews", "do-gooders" and "those protecting Gypsies and Muslims", specifically listing the people he believed were not worthy of the state awards presented on January 9.
"We intend to treat this as a serious incident. We will take whatever measures the law allows to keep [Mr Mizik's party] under control," said Parliamentary Speaker Andrej Danko. He promised that MPs would receive disciplinary penalties if they continued to behave in this fashion.
"In connection to this, we have received an e-mail application to the General Prosecutors Office which was forwarded to the disciplinary department (Trestny odbor) and will be looked into in accordance with the law," confirmed the spokesperson of the Office Andrea Predajňová.
The racist comments by the MP have since been deleted from the Facebook page of his party. Its headquarters claim that his views are not an official statement of the party. In his message to public broadcaster RTVS, the vice-chair of the party Milan Uhrík argued unapologetically that "it is itself racism to censor criticism only because the criticised person is a Jew or a Gypsy".
While stricter legislature against extremism was passed in the Autumn, the Justice Ministry does not plan to adopt stricter measures against hate-speech on the internet at present.
