Czech President Petr Pavel calls for surveillance of Russian immigrants abroad, cites WWII-era internment of Japanese Americans as precedent
Secret services in Western countries should increase their surveillance of Russian citizens living abroad, said Czech Republic’s President Petr Pavel in an extensive interview with Radio Free Europe.
“I think,” Pavel said,
that, just as in the past, during a number of other world conflicts, at the time of ongoing war, security measures in relation to Russian citizens should be more stringent than in ordinary times. All Russian citizens living in Western countries should be surveilled much closer than before. Because they are citizens of a nation engaged in a war of aggression.
When elaborating on this idea, Pavel drew a parallel with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s decision to incarcerate hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II.
“I might feel sorry for those people,” he said about the Russian diaspora,
but still, if we look back, when the Second World War started, the entirety of the United States’ Japanese population was put under strict surveillance. This is simply the price of war.
When asked what exactly it means to be “put under strict surveillance,” the Czech head of state clarified: “What I mean is being closely watched by the secret services.”