AFP, Prague :The Czech president attended a rally against migrants and Islam in Prague on Tuesday on the anniversary of the 1989 Velvet Revolution, which peacefully toppled communism in then Czechoslovakia.Nearly 70 percent of Czechs oppose the arrival of migrants and refugees in their country, according to a recent survey by the Czech Academy of Sciences.Few asylum seekers have chosen to stay in the largely secular European Union and NATO member nation of 10.5 million, with a majority heading to wealthier Germany and other western EU states.The UN recently criticised a Czech detention centre for migrants and refugees as “degrading.”President Milos Zeman, a former communist, told the thousands gathered at Tuesday’s event organised by the xenophobic Bloc Against Islam movement that people opposed to Islam and migrants should not be “branded” Islamophobes, fascists or racists.In the past Czech presidents were chosen by parliament, but in 2013 Zeman become the first one to be directly elected by the people since the fall of communism.He has the power to veto legislation as well as to appoint judges and the country’s central banker.The rally he attended was one of dozens held across the country focused mostly on Europe’s migrant crisis and held amid hiked security in the wake of the Paris terror attacks that left at least 129 people dead in the worst-ever such event on French soil.AP report adds: Muslims around the United States are facing a backlash following the deadly attacks in Paris, including vandalism to mosques and Islamic centres, hate-filled phone and online messages and threats of violence.Advocacy leaders say they have come to expect some anti-Muslim sentiment following such attacks, but they now see a spike that seems notable, stirred by anti-Muslim sentiment in the media.”The picture is getting increasingly bleak,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Washington, DC-based Council on American-Islamic Relations.”There’s been an accumulation of anti-Islamic rhetoric in our lives and that I think has trigged these overt acts of violence and vandalism.”He said the rise in the level of anti-Muslim sentiment is reflected by some GOP presidential candidates, governors and others speaking out in opposition to the US accepting more Syrian refugees.Hooper said the council is seeing an increase in anti-Muslim incidents since Friday’s attacks in Paris that killed 129 people and wounded more than 350.
