News

Pro-refugee demos throughout Europe, Czech Police detain Romani activist again over flag

14.9.2015 0:41 Czech Police detained Romani activist Ivana Mariposa Čonková in Prague yesterday immediately prior to the beginning of a demonstration there for an "Open Europe", one of several such events held throughout the continent. Although the officers did not initially inform her why she was being detained, it later turned out that it was because she was holding a Czech flag altered to feature elements of the international Romani flag.  full story

Hungarian camerawoman who kicked refugees including children being investigated by police

13.9.2015 8:23 Hungary has been shaken by a brief video taken at its border with Serbia that shows a camerawoman for Hungary's N1TV station kicking young refugee boys and girls and tripping a refugee carrying a child as they make their way through a Hungarian Police cordon. Other journalists captured the camerawoman's behavior on film.  full story

Czech platform for institutionalized children calls on Gov't to simplify its child welfare system

13.9.2015 1:05 Vteřina poté ("One Second Later"), an independent platform in the Czech Republic advocating for the rights of institutionalized children, has sent an open letter to Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka, Czech Labor and Social Affairs Minister Michaela Marksová, Czech Education Minister Kateřina Valachová, Czech Health Minister Svatopluk Němeček and Czech Human Rights Minister Jiří Dienstbier calling on them to fulfill the Government's pledge to simplify its care system for at-risk children. The Government made that pledge in its National Strategy for the Protection of the Rights of the Child in 2012.  full story

Bulgaria and France reprimanded by UN Human Rights Commissioner over Roma displacement

12.9.2015 20:38 Yesterday the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, called on Bulgaria and France to stop forcibly clearing Romani encampments. The High Commissioner said that French authorities evidently have been engaging in a "systematic policy" of this practice since 2012.  full story

Czech Gov't Agency for Social Inclusion reports on transitional housing programs now underway

12.9.2015 19:10 The Czech Government Agency for Social Inclusion has released research analyzing so-called transitional housing systems currently being implemented throughout the country in detail. Such systems are being used by more than 10 cities and social service providers for working with people who are unable to access standard housing for various reasons.  full story

Human Rights Watch says Czech debate on migration would cause an uproar if understood in the West

11.9.2015 20:17 According to Andrew Stroehlein of the Brussels branch of Human Rights Watch (HRW), the domestic public debate about the refugee crisis is being led in the Czech Republic in a way that would cause an international uproar if it were happening in a Western European country. The reputation of the Czech Republic and its politicians, he believes, is protected to a significant degree by the fact that few people outside the country speak Czech.  full story

Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015 holds its closing meeting in Sarajevo

11.9.2015 2:49 On 10 and 11 September the 28th and final International Steering Committee Meeting of the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015 is being held in Sarajevo. The meeting is being attended by the national coordinators of the countries involved as well as many collaborating individuals and institutional partners and aims to draw attention to the lessons learned and successes achieved during the past decade.  full story

Another Czech school segregating Romani children this year

11.9.2015 1:50 On 1 September the parents of some of the first-graders at the Antonín Sochor Primary School in the Czech town of Duchcov found an unpleasant surprise awaited them. The first grade class identified as "1A" includes all of the newly-enrolled Romani children, while class "1B" next door has been reserved exclusively for the children of local non-Roma.  full story

VIDEO: Austrian gives refugees a ride - look what happened next!

8.9.2015 22:05 On Sunday, 6 September, approximately 100 Austrians announced they were undertaking a private initiative to assist refugees and drove to Hungary in their own cars from Vienna that same day. The aim of their trip was to deliver necessary items to refugees desperately waiting for a chance to reach their destinations - and to personally transport at least some of them to Austria.  full story

Czech school opens "special" first-grade class, only Roma assigned to it

8.9.2015 19:57 The principal of a primary school in the town of Krásná Lípa in the Šluknov foothills has created a "special" class only for Romani first-graders. Their parents are complaining that they did not know their children would be attending a class that would be separate from the other children.  full story

Czech Human Rights Minister proposes illegally sterilized women receive CZK 300 000 compensation

7.9.2015 17:10 Czech Human Rights Minister Jiří Dienstbier will submit a proposal to the Government this month for women who have been illegally sterilized to receive compensation. The amount he is proposing is CZK 300 000 (EUR 11 000).  full story

Danish journalist interviewed by Czech weekly about "the freedom to disseminate hatred"

7.9.2015 16:25 The Czech weekly RESPEKT (issue 37/2015) has published an intervew with Danish journalist Flemming Rose, who advocated in 2005 for publishing caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in the Danish weekly Jyllands-Posten. He has lived under constant police protection ever since.  full story

Czech right-wing extremist proposes refugees be "concentrated" at Terezín

7.9.2015 15:41 Adam B. Bartoš, chair of the National Democracy (ND) political group, which is not seated in the Czech Parliament, posted yet another remark about refugees to his publicly accessible Facebook profile after midnight today. "Why create camps of tents for the aliens near Břeclav (and elsewhere) to stress and terrorize local residents? After all, we have the beautiful fortress town of Terezín (safer than any little tent city) where the aliens could be concentrated before the trains take them home..." he wrote.  full story

Czech Christian Democrats strip local councilor of party membership over his racist remarks about refugees

6.9.2015 23:58 Daniel Kalenda, a local councilor in the town of Liberec and member of the Czech Christian Democratic Party (KDU-ČSL) who made hateful, pejorative remarks about the refugees who recently perished in a truck in eastern Austria near the Hungarian border, has been stripped of his membership by party leaders. Kalenda posted the following remarks, among others, to social networking sites: "God, 71 dead on a highway in Austria... And should we be crying? They say they ran out of air the minute the doors were closed. What do you expect? You shouldn't be so stupid as to get into a truck like that. The very best thing of all would be for them to stay home. They say the world is crushed [by this news]... I am not mourning them, I'm not sorry for them... Not at all! This element doesn't belong here, they are filth and scum."  full story

Police across Central and Eastern Europe investigating online death threats against refugees

6.9.2015 21:09 News server Wyborcza.pl reports that the Polish Prosecutor-General will be investigating the hateful commentary targeting migrants now turning up in Internet discussion forums. The authors of some posts are proposing, for example, that Syrian refugees all be sent to the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.  full story

Hungary: Football hooligans assault and injure refugees at Budapest train station

5.9.2015 21:44 News server SME.sk reports that last night and in the early hours of this morning Hungarian football hooligans assaulted refugees camping at Budapest's Keleti train station. The hooligans injured several people and two refugees were hospitalized.  full story

Former Czech President Klaus launches new petition against immigration

5.9.2015 20:50 Former Czech President Klaus has initiated a new petition against immigration. The document, which he presented today at a briefing at the exhibition grounds in the town of Lysá nad Labem, calls on the Czech Government to ensure national security and the external inviolability of the state's borders by any means necessary, including deployment of the Army and Police.  full story

First RomaVersitas Summit now underway and broadcast online

4.9.2015 23:50 The Roma Education Fund's RomaVersitas summit began yesterday in Budapest and ends tomorrow. Approximately 60 Romaversitas students from Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova and Serbia, countries where REF supports RomaVersitas Student Centers, are participating in the three-day summit.  full story

Czech counter-intelligence says number of anti-Romani events fell in 2014, extremists agitating against Islam instead

4.9.2015 22:23 Last year right-wing extremists in the Czech Republic focused on anti-Islamic themes instead of on anti-Romani invective. The radical scene there continues to be fragmented.  full story

European Roma and Travellers Forum calls summer demolitions of Romani dwellings "unprecedented"

3.9.2015 22:03 The European Roma and Travellers Forum has released a statement called "Evictions Unlimited" on what it calls an "unprecedented upsurge" in the demolition of Romani housing and eviction of Romani people both in EU Member States and in countries such as Albania. Whether the demolitions and evictions have involved the use of force or not, the ERTF says they have all been "marked by the policy of rejection".  full story