News

British educator, ashamed of his country's vote on remaining in EU, calls for referendum on exit terms

26.6.2016 10:13 Mark Penfold, an educator and founding member of the Roma Education Support Trust, has written the following letter in response to the results of the referendum on Brexit. News server Romea.cz republishes it here in full.  full story

videoGoal of his career! Romani footballer Ricardo Quaresma sends Portugal to EURO 2016 quarterfinals

26.6.2016 9:04 Portugal has become the third quarterfinalist in the EURO 2016 football championship underway now in France. In yesterday's smash hit, Portugal, the winner of the "Czech " Core Group D, overwhelmed Croatia 1 : 0 in extra time after substitute Ricardo Quaresma scored a goal at 117 minutes.  full story

Czech media analysis warns of pro-Kremlin websites: Dangerous propaganda and unfair reporting

25.6.2016 12:39 Pro-Kremlin websites in the Czech Republic, primarily the online tabloid Parlamentní listy, are exploiting sophisticated methods for manipulating public opinion that break all the rules of professional journalism. Those are the results of an analysis performed by political scientists at Masaryk University with the support of the European Values think tank.  full story

UK police officer Petr Torák: I'm still in shock over Brexit

25.6.2016 10:28 Petr Torák, a Romani émigré from the Czech Republic, is a police officer who is more than successful in Great Britain. Last year he was made a Member of the British Empire for his work.  full story

Czech PM says EU must become less bureaucratic, Slovak Govt tells its nationals in Britain not to worry yet

25.6.2016 9:30 The website of the Czech Embassy in London reports that Czech Foreign Minister Lubomír Zaorálek and Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka have responded to the results of the referendum in the United Kingdom on its EU membership, which are that most voters have chosen to leave. The Slovak Foreign Ministry meanwhile has assured its citizens living and working in Britain that during the two-year transition period they do not have to fear any changes to their legal position.  full story

Romea.cz survey: Roma from abroad living in Britain fear for their future after Brexit

24.6.2016 21:22 Romani people from abroad who are living in Great Britain are not enthusiastic about the results of the referendum on leaving the European Union. Britons have decided to leave the EU and all immigrants there suddenly do not know what exactly lies in store for them.  full story

Pavel Botoš: Brexit will cause big problems for Romani families from abroad now living in Britain

24.6.2016 18:30 Yesterday Britain's referendum decided in favor of leaving the European Union. After counting all of the votes, 51.9 % of those cast favored leaving the EU as compared to 48.1 % who favored remaining.  full story

Brexit: Great Britain says it wants to leave the European Union

24.6.2016 7:13 The BBC, ITV and Sky News are forecasting that British voters have decided to leave the European Union. While the media are reporting the referendum outcome as
irreversible, reportedly neither camp has yet achieved the 16.4 million votes said to be necessary to declare victory.  full story

UNICEF: Unaccompanied minors increasing among refugees

23.6.2016 8:35 Among the asylum-seekers traveling from Africa to Italy by sea there have been 7 009 unaccompanied minors so far this year. That is double the number of children who traveled alone last year.  full story

Czech President calls DSSS party neo-Nazis, they say he parrots them on issue of migrants

23.6.2016 7:00 Speaking at the commemorative ceremony marking the anniversary of the obliteration of the village of Lidice during the Second World War, Czech President Miloš Zeman
warned against neo-Nazism, saying that it is inconspicuously beginning to threaten Czech society. His remarks on 11 June marked the 74th anniversary of the annihilation of the village by Nazi soldiers and specifically mentioned the members of the Workers Social Justice Party (DSSS) in the Czech Republic and the ultra-right party led by Marian Kotleba in Slovakia, calling them both neo-Nazis.  full story

Czech-language internet users, Roma included, fall for debunked hoax about mass wedding of adults and children

22.6.2016 7:33 A long-debunked hoax about an alleged wedding between 450 little girls and adult men has been spreading online once more in the Czech Republic. This particular hoax was first spread in 2009.  full story

Germany: Untraditional theater production in Berlin plays with anti-migrant prejudice

21.6.2016 20:47 The Deutsches Theater in Berlin has prepared an interesting artistic performance that could be a big source of inspiration to us all. In response to last year's "special summer and fall", as the company calls the wave of immigrants and refugees who arrived in Germany last year, they have created a production called Wechselstube (Exchange Office).  full story

Petr Torák, Romani police officer, on Brexit: I believe we will remain

21.6.2016 7:41 Czech and Slovak citizens living in Peterborough, England have been discussing the EU referendum a lot in recent weeks, and many are concerned about what it will mean for them. That's according to Petr Torák, a Romani man from the Czech Republic who has been serving on the Peterborough police force for 10 years in a part of the country where, according to polls, proponents of Brexit may achieve a resounding victory.  full story

Germany: Immigrants do not commit more crime than anybody else

20.6.2016 7:48 On 10 June the German newspaper Die Welt reported that Germany's Federal Crime Bureau (BKA) has published its data on immigrant perpetrators of crime for the first time ever. During the first quarter of 2016, 69 000 felonies in the country were committed by migrants.  full story

Austria: Ultra-right extremists assault university rector during lecture

19.6.2016 10:27 A lecture at a university in the southern Austrian town of Klagenfurt was disrupted on 10 June by approximately 10 adherents of the ultra-right who burst into the lecture hall shouting with megaphones. Rector Oliver Vitouch told the Austrian Press Agency that one of them proceeded to strike him in the belly.  full story

Russia: Mass demolition of homes in one of the biggest Romani settlements

18.6.2016 9:24 The situation in the municipality of Plechanovo, one of the biggest Romani settlements in Russia, where mass street fighting occurred several weeks ago between local residents and police over efforts by the gas utility to cut Romani residents off from the gas lines, has deteriorated further. Starting in the first week of June, the illegal constructions in which local Romani people are living have been demolished.  full story

UK: MP Cox, who opposed "Brexit" and supported refugee reception, has been murdered

17.6.2016 7:18 British Labour MP Jo Cox, who strove to see Britain remain in the European Union, has been murdered in her electoral district. Police quickly arrested the man suspected of committing the attack.  full story

When words fall on stony soil and hearts harden in the face of injustice: On coercive sterilisation and social theatre

16.6.2016 11:14 In Czechoslovakia coercive sterilisation policies primarily targeted groups that were considered a threat to the public health of society. Romani women were among these targeted groups, and over a period of almost thirty years, hundreds of Romani women were either sterilised without their knowledge, or unduly pressured by doctors and social workers to ‘consent’ to sterilisation. It was a bitter and cruel historical twist that Czechoslovakia launched its eugenic program focused on limiting the reproductive capacities of its ‘problematic’ groups in the early 1970s, just when Sweden finally chose to abolish its coercive sterilisation policies. Sweden had the unsavoury distinction of being the first country to introduce eugenic laws in the 1930s, even before Nazi Germany or fascist Italy. Only in 1993 did Czech-Slovak authorities abolish such abusive state policies, but in the absence of any new comprehensive policy framework, the practice mushroomed and continued until early 2000.  full story

Czech Republic: Another TV Prima insider comes forward, says producers want "only negative voices" from interviews on refugees

16.6.2016 7:33 The decision last year by the management of TV Prima to depict refugees as a threat had its specific impacts on the work of their reporters in the central newsroom and in the regions. "I can confirm that I actually, several times, received the instruction to film 'man-on-the-street' interviews with people about refugees and to use only the negative reactions. Or I was instructed during the stand-up to say that people do not want refugees in their community and are afraid of them, without anybody verifying beforehand that it was actually true," says a woman who contacted investigative news server HlídacíPes.org ("Watchdog") with her testimony after reading their series of articles on the issue.  full story

EU Member States may not punish migrants for illegal entry by imprisoning them

15.6.2016 6:18 Migrants who illegally cross the borders of most EU Member States in the Schengen zone may not be punished with imprisonment for so doing. The European Court of Justice has decided that instead of that punishment, the Member State concerned should take advantage of the so-called "Return Directive" to deport the migrant, according to the conditions of the directive, back to the country from which the migrant performed the illegal crossing.  full story