Commentary

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

Commentary: Czech Labor Minister and ombud at odds over housing benefit law, mayor says state administration is "collapsing"

25.6.2015 19:35 The threat of tens of thousands of new homeless people, including families with children, ending up "on the streets" over the next few months has forced Czech Government politicians to re-evaluate the interpretation of an amendment to the law on aid to those in material distress adopted last fall by legislators, but it is not yet clear what the next steps will be. Only one thing is clear: Based on the developments of recent months and weeks, there is no guarantee that legislators will adopt another amendment on this issue in time that will be good enough to not be changed again several months from now.  full story

Dragan Ristic: Anatomy of an Idea - The European Roma Institute

23.6.2015 22:58 Dragan Ristic is a guitarist, lyricist and vocalist with the music group KAL. A citizen and resident of Serbia, he holds a Master's in Film Theory from the University of Belgrade.  full story

Commentary: Czech Human Rights Minister wakes up on homelessness - better late than later?

20.6.2015 0:04 The crisis around the implementation of the amendment to the law on aid to those in material distress, which could result in forcing thousands, including families with children, onto the streets, is a testament to the horrible chaos and lack of conceptual clarity in Czech politics. Czech Human Rights Minister Jiří Dienstbier warned yesterday that as many as 17 000 people could lose their "homes" in residential hotels as a result of the legislation.  full story

Commentary: Czech MP uses Nazi term to discuss the impoverished

15.6.2015 17:17 At the end of May, an essential piece of news was reported about the so far unsuccessful attempts by more than one administration in the Czech Republic to halt the unfavorable trend of the creation of socially excluded localities. During the past nine years, the number of these places has doubled and the number of people who are being displaced into the "ghettos" has also risen.  full story

Drahomír R. Horváth: Roma in the Czech Republic are a gold mine

11.6.2015 22:47 First of all, I would not be glad if the impression were to be given that in the Czech Republic, Romani people are socially excluded in general, or that our/their integration into society concerns the entire national minority who are citizens here. Many of us Roma are integrated into society, many of us Roma do not feel that society does not include us.  full story

Does the Czech Human Rights Minister grasp the purported dispute between the "ethnic" and "social" approaches to inclusion?

3.6.2015 17:35 Two important events took place recently that may fundamentally influence the approach to Romani integration policy and combating socially excluded localities for a long time to come. A new report on socially excluded localities was presented by the GAC company, and several hours later, Czech Human Rights Minister Dienstbier announced that the new director of the Czech Government Agency for Social Inclusion will be Radek Jiránek.  full story

Commentary: Not everyone has luck or talent - response to Julius Zajac about options for ghetto children

3.6.2015 15:40 Julius Zajac's recent commentary presented a proud, self-aware perspective on the problems of Roma - in his view the key to overcoming these problems is education, and anyone can access a decent education in the Czech Republic. Racism, he says, does not stand in the way.  full story

Julius Zajac: I will never recognize a self-appointed Council of Elders

25.5.2015 7:52 So: Now we have a Council of Elders. How its members intend to aid the integration of Romani people into Czech society is unclear.  full story

Commentary: Who has gone nuts? Holomek is misinformed

24.5.2015 23:29 In connection with the gradual destruction of the Czech Government Agency for Social Inclusion by Czech Human Rights Minister Jiří Dienstbier's team, as well as the discussion about the new format for state interventions that those promoting exclusively "Romani" measures want to promote in public policy, many contradictory claims are being made about who has thought what and what was supposed to work for whom. It is a bit tendentious and unfair for some members of the Czech Government Inter-ministerial Commission for Roma Community Affairs and for Romani publicists to claim that People in Need somehow denies Romanipen and the ethnic dimension of the situation of the Romani minority in the Czech Republic.  full story

Commentary: What will the Agency be like once its employees give notice?

23.5.2015 14:30 On 21 May, 14 employees of the Czech Government Agency for Social Inclusion gave their notice. The resignations happened more than one month after the dismissal of Agency director Martin Šimáček, which jump-started a crisis within that institution and a tempestuous discussion about its future and about Romani integration policy.  full story