Extended search

Czech Republic: Gay Romani man's week includes a racist assault with a gun, rejection from a bar and strange police treatment

16.9.2015 20:55 At the beginning of August, I experienced several amazing days with the organization ARA ART. I participated in the first international Roma LGBT conference. As part of the conference, together with six other gay Roma, I took part in the Theater of the Oppressed by putting on a play about being Roma and gay. At the conference, I met 20 other Romani LGBT. In our free time, we were able to enjoy ourselves freely in clubs and other entertainment facilities without being discriminated against. All this changed upon my return to the mundane reality of the city of Ostrava.  full story

Czech volunteer firefighters tell Romani children club is full - then accept a different applicant

16.9.2015 20:14 The Plzeňský deník daily reported on 11 September that the Voluntary Firefighter Unit in the Bolevec neighborhood of the Czech town of Plzeň recently refused to accept applications from four Romani children to join their club. Allegedly there was no more room for new members.  full story

Czech NGO found barefoot, hungry children in detention center for asylum-seekers who are being charged money by authorities

16.9.2015 18:03 Czech NGOs report that the conditions in Czech facilities for asylum-seekers are substandard. The situation in detention facilities is especially bad, where asylum-seekers complain that their mobile telephones and money are being confiscated.
 full story

Czech NGOs question whether mandatory preschool is an effective way to help socially disadvantaged children

16.9.2015 4:39 A proposed amendment to the Schools Act that would make the final year of preschool mandatory in the Czech Republic as of 2017 is not being unequivocally accepted by all experts on education. Those opposed include, for example, the Association of Forest Nursery Schools (Asociace lesních mateřských škol).  full story

Czech pizzeria has the answer: It won't serve immigrants and wants to "Stop Islam"

16.9.2015 2:50 The Grand Italia Ristorante Pizzeria in the Czech town of Hrušovany nad Jevišovkou posted the slogans "We don't serve immigrants" and "Stop Islam" to its Facebook profile at the start of September. After members of the public responded to his messaging, restaurant manager Tomáš Ševčík then posted the following: "Yesterday I was called a Nazi because I expressed my opinion about the problem with refugees - we got 200 negative reviews, insults and threats. When I looked at the profiles of those posting I couldn't believe it. They either work for a 'nonprofit' or are foreigners and don't understand at all what is going on - this is just a gimmick so we'll be afraid of them. I don't mind foreigners, what I mind is this invasion OF ILLEGAL REFUGEES WHO BELIEVE THEY ARE ENTITLED TO ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING."  full story

RVN Editor Valery Novoselsky: Everything online becomes visible, even in the mahallas

15.9.2015 18:59 Anyone who has become interested in Romani issues during the past 15 years has probably come across the Roma Virtual Network (RVN) online, a set of 33 listservs in 20 languages, Romani included, that aggregates online information about Romani issues and shares it with more than 10 000 subscribers. News server Romea.cz interviewed RVN’s editor, Valery Novoselsky, about this work and RVN's future plans.  full story

Forum 2000 opens with debate about segregation of Roma in the Czech schools

14.9.2015 23:24 The 19th annual Forum 2000 conference began yesterday in Prague, entitled "Democracy and Education". The event, first launched by former Czech President Václav Havel in 1997, will feature many discussions and lectures, including events outside of Prague, and ends Wednesday.  full story

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