Is the Ukrainian mafia kidnapping Roma and other children for organ harvesting in the Czech Republic? No, that's not true: Czech police have no evidence of children being abducted by Ukrainians.
The claim that there have been cases of child abduction appeared in a video (archived here) where it was published on TikTok on July 19, 2023, with captions in Czech, which Lead Stories staff translated as "Police do not use handcuffs at all when arresting the UA mafia who kidnap children". The voice in the video says in Czech, translated by Lead Stories staff into English, as:
Hello Romas, and also white people, who have small children. Since this is not the first,second, third, fourth or tenth case of attempted, or even actual kidnapping of children for spare parts, organs, I am telling you to take care of your children. The Ukrainian mafia, which is here, has learnt that it is quite easy to do it here and has started to kidnap Roma children and also the white ones, the little ones, the most naive ones.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Jul 21 07:16:56 2023 UTC)
Czech Police have not registered any cases of children abduction by anyone in the country, Czech Police Presidium spokesman Jakub Vincalek said by phone. Vincalek also said that police act according to the nature of the offense, regardless of the nationality of the perpetrator.
Police have already dealt with a similar social media post about children being kidnapped in a Rokycany, a town in the southwest part of the country, and are assuring citizens that the offense never happened, the police said on its official Twitter account on July 18. Authorities also dealt with a fake news post accusing Ukrainians of killing an 11-year-old boy in Sokolov, a town in western Bohemia with a Roma population, calling for action against Ukranian nationals, iRozhlas reported.
The Czech Republic is facing heightened tensions between the country´s Roma minority and Ukrainians after an incident in June, in which a Ukranian national allegedly committed a murder, iRozhlas reported. While authorities sent the suspect into a custody in June, they have not confirmed his nationality. The victim was a Roma youth, according to media reports, iRozhlas said.
Since then, the two communities have clashed on several occasions, with pro-Kremlin and extremist political forces trying to use the incidents to raise anti-Ukrainian and anti-government sentiment among Roma community, Seznam Zpravy reported.
Government commissioner for Roma Affairs Lucie Fukova said that there the government may set up a working group to combat the spread of misinformation among the community, iDnes reported.
