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MUSLIMS NOT WELCOME IN CZECH REPUBLIC – PRIME MINISTER DECLARES

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The Czech Prime Minister, Bohuslav Sobotka, on Tuesday declared that he does not want a “large Muslim community” insisting that each EU member should be able to choose how many migrants to accept.


“We don’t have a large Muslim community here,” Sobotka said of the estimated 10,000 to 20,000 Muslims who live in the Central European country of 10.5 million people.

“And to be honest, we don’t want a large Muslim community to form here, given the problems we’re seeing,” Sobotka told the Pravo daily.

Sobotka spoke ahead German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to Prague on Thursday, saying they have divergent views on how to solve Europe’s migrant crisis.

Merkel has continued to urge countries to take in a greater share of refugees while the Czech Republic staunchly opposes the contested EU quota system devised to distribute refugees across the bloc.

“I’ve been convinced since the start of the migration debate that the member states need to have sovereignty regarding the choice of the number of refugees (to welcome),” Sobotka said.

“It’s the national governments that ultimately have to ensure people’s security.”

The leftist premier however cautioned against casting refugees as terrorists.

“It’s not possible to put an equal sign between refugees and terrorists. But at the same time, it’s not possible to have the same approach as Germany last year, namely to authorise the influx of a huge number of people without any oversight,” he said.

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