Commentary

Karel Holomek: We should approach migrants through a sober examination of the facts

4.11.2015 0:09 The most recent opinion I have come across in the broad, endless debate about the refugees and what to do with them comes from Roman Joch (Lidové noviny, 15 October). In his opinion piece, he has presented the horrifying vision of author Jean Raspail's novel The Camp of the Saints, in which European civilization is destroyed by hordes of refugees who take what they do not have away from those who are incapable of holding onto what is theirs because of some sort of chimerical kindness and limitless tolerance.  full story

Commentary: Czech Interior Minister's praise of President echoes communism

30.10.2015 18:46 The main thing we need is peace and quiet for our work, and we won't let any of these "elements" disrupt it. That used to be a favorite phrase of communist functionaries during the previous regime.  full story

Address of His Holiness Pope Francis: Meeting with participants in the pilgrimage of Gypsies

27.10.2015 17:46 Dear Brothers and Sisters, I welcome and greet you all cordially. I thank Cardinal Antonio Maria Vegliò for his words and for having organized this event in collaboration with: the “Migrantes” Foundation of the Italian Episcopal Conference; the “Migrantes” Office of the Diocese of Rome and the Sant’Egidio Community.
 full story

Commentary: Are the Czech schools at risk of chaos next year? Experts, teachers doubt schools are prepared for inclusion

26.10.2015 20:11 The "special schools" will be closed and all of the children in them will move into unprepared "normal" schools where there will not be enough teaching assistants, materials or teachers. Chaos will reign, children, parents and teachers will be dissatisfied.  full story

Commentary: Czech Education Minister says "Romani schools" won't change overnight as a result of new law

23.10.2015 19:19 In an interview for the daily Deník.cz, Czech Education Minister Kateřina Valachová said that the ministry's plan to educate all children together is not "social engineering" and that people should not believe that it will mean the Romani children who attend "Romani schools" in the ghettos will suddenly begin attending schools elsewhere. Inclusion, according to the minister, is not something to undertake casually.  full story

Commentary: Won't Czech education reform just rename the schools (again) without achieving equality for Roma?

3.10.2015 1:09 Confusion, incessant attacks by critics, and uncertainties - these are evidently the main characteristics of the current state of Czech education reform. The proposals now on offer are yet another attempt to close the country's "special schools" and achieve inclusion.  full story

Gwendolyn Albert: The long train ride to justice for forcibly sterilized women

2.10.2015 16:36 It has been more than 10 years since I first learned of the forced sterilization of women in the former Czechoslovakia and how it was still continuing in the 21st century. It is now almost 10 years since I first met Elena Gorolová and many of the other women to whom this actually happened. When I imagine what their journey toward justice has been like, I picture them all on a train ride. Sometimes the train abruptly stops on the tracks, but no one never explains to the passengers - or the rest of us – when exactly the doors are going to open.  full story

European Association for the Defence of Human Rights: Europe, quo vadis?

24.9.2015 19:19 Is there a migrant and/or refugee crisis? Or is there a European crisis? The European Association for the Defence of Human Rights (AEDH) considers that this issue has implications for the future of the European Union, given the powerful consequences of member states’ decisions for the rights of migrants, whether they are fleeing war, repression, poverty or death. While thousands of human beings – men, women and children – have put their faith in Europe in order to survive and rebuild their lives, the governments of EU countries have responded with, at best, a limited form of generosity and, at worst, national preference, violence, xenophobia and racism. The Council of Ministers’ failure to understand that global instability cannot be solved with barriers or walls has led to meetings that reveal serious flaws in European integration. Despite claiming to uphold the rule of law, it has shown itself to be fearful, poisoned by suspicion and even hatred of outsiders. Some governments have spread the illusion of an illegal and organised invasion to justify the use of violence, with potentially fatal consequences.  full story

Qristina Zavačková Cummings: Hunter to Hunted

23.9.2015 23:37 Yesterday, I discovered (via Facebook) that someone was attempting to sell a shirt via the popular website "Zazzle" (an online retailer that allows users to upload images and create their own merchandise, or buy merchandise created by other users, as well as use images from participating companies), that was extremely offensive.  full story

Juan de Dios Ramírez-Heredia: Hunger and fear are stronger than barbed-wire fences

23.9.2015 1:32 The following opinion piece by Juan de Dios Ramírez-Heredia, former Member of the European Parliament and current President of the Spanish Romani Union, was first distributed through the Roma Virtual Network on 17 September 2015 and is reprinted here with permission.
 full story

Commentary: Czech media mock UN recommendations on racism and Roma

31.8.2015 1:24 The UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued its reports on the situation in several countries from around the world last week. The otherwise serious news server Aktuálně.cz reported the news with the headline "UN: Czechs should stop Romani ghettos, the Dutch should stop Black Pete", and I think that by so doing they quite knowingly indicated to the reader that all of the Committee's recommendations are to be seen as absurd.  full story

Commentary: Correct language in the USA isn't sparing anyone's life

27.8.2015 19:48 Neither a correct nor a "hypercorrect" vocabulary, in and of itself, is enough to get rid of any problem. Petra Gelbart, who has commented on her shock that the Prague Transit Authority is telling its passengers "amusing" anecdotes about the history of the slang expressions used by drivers, certainly knows this.  full story

Commentary: Czech media spread panic about asylum-seeker "uprising", ignore human rights issues

4.8.2015 1:23 Last Thursday evening the Czech news media delivered a dramatic, exciting report claiming that asylum-seekers in a camp in Bělá pod Bezdězem had "rebelled"! Roughly 50 were said to have attempted to escape the facility!  full story

Drahomír Radek Horváth: I don't know where to stand on fear of immigrants and Islam

30.7.2015 23:48 I am not a paranoid person and I don't generalize, I judge people by the quality of their character, not their skin color, I tolerate other opinions, religions, sexual orientations, etc. Simply put, as a member of a national minority I have "enjoyed" plenty of generalizations about Roma in my own life.  full story

Karel Holomek: Polemic with Václav Bělohradský about post-representative society

28.7.2015 1:17 Intra muros, extra muros – inside the "walls of Rome" or outside them: That is how Václav Bělohradský discusses earlier conceptions of society in an article published in the daily Právo entitled "Without nostalgia: On post-representational democracy", and he undoubtedly is right to do so. In the piece, he says he considers multiculturalism to be an "anti-Enlightenment utopia that has been going bankrupt before the eyes of
Europeans" for the last decade.  full story

Commentary: Football still trumps immigration demonstrations for the Czech public

21.7.2015 1:12 On Saturday in Prague we saw demonstrations against receiving refugees and in favor of receiving them. These events struck me as bizarre and a bit tragicomic.
 full story

Commentary: Czech Police not living up to their motto

20.7.2015 18:26 Even though I have long had no illusions about how that notorious motto of the Czech Police, "To assist and protect", can sometimes work in practice, during Saturday's demonstrations on Wenceslas Square I could not believe my eyes. Honor is of course due to the officers who kept the enraged, fanatical neo-Nazis away from the people expressing solidarity with refugees that evening (which is, after all, their job), but I would like to discuss my experience with those of their colleagues who did not lift a finger when I directly asked them for assistance.  full story

Commentary: A hijacked ceremony and the moral power of the Mothers of Srebrenica

16.7.2015 19:24 When Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić set out last Saturday for the ceremony commemorating the 20th anniversary of the genocide near the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, he probably did not expect to be received with applause, but he probably did not suspect he would have to quickly leave the memorial to the victims at the former UN base in Srebrenica-Potočari in a stampede under a hail of curses, plastic bottles and rocks. On a day that was supposed to honor the memory of the more than 8 000 ethnic Muslims massacred by Bosnian Serbian military units in July 1995 near Srebrenic the victims instead became yet again a target of hypocritical political games at truth and reconciliation.  full story

Commentary: Are the Czech police not bothered by death threats and a gallows?

6.7.2015 22:08 The following commentary was first published in Czech on 2 July.  full story

Commentary: Actually, the Czech Police do not "know" that a gallows has no place in a democracy

6.7.2015 19:32 Police officers do not have an easy job and Czech Interior Minister Milan Chovanec evidently does not know much about their work. Just imagine someone bringing a mock-up of a gallows to a demonstration, as occurred last Wednesday.  full story