News

Czech Republic: Roma respond to accusations of food waste

Czech Republic, 9.1.2015 20:49, (ROMEA) News server Romea.cz has reached out to our colleagues and readers for their response to the recent remarks made by Ms Klára Vítková-Rulíková regarding the wasting of food by the family of the quintuplets and indirectly by Romani families in general. We asked people how their families handle food, whether it is a habit not to eat leftovers, and what they think of this all.  full story

Czech Constitutional Court postpones repeat elections in Brno municipality

Brno, 9.1.2015 19:43, (ROMEA) On Thursday, 8 January, the Czech Constitutional Court (Ústavní soud- ÚS) halted preparations for a repeat of the local elections in the Brno-sever Municipal Department until it reaches a decision on complaints filed by the Municipal Department and Mayor Rostislav Hakl (Czech Social Democratic Party - ČSSD). The Regional Court in Brno cancelled the results of last year's elections over vote-buying and Czech Interior Minister Milan Chovanec then announced new elections for 14 March.  full story

Czech Republic: Muslim representative touts conspiracy theories about the murders in Paris

Prague, 9.1.2015 18:07, (ROMEA) Mohammed Abbas, the director of the Muslim Union in the Czech Republic, has given media appearances in which he has doubted whether Islamists were responsible for several high-profile terrorist attacks. Speaking in an interview with Daniela Drtinová on the internet television station DVTV and then on yesterday's episode of Czech Television's "Hyde Park" program, Abbas said the 9/11 attack on New York could have been committed by the U.S. Government; that since no one had ever found the terrorists who committed murder on a London bus it could not be proven that they were Muslim; and that now in Paris it is far from certain that it was actually Muslims who committed these attacks and that a secret service game could well be behind it all.  full story

Ukraine: New Year's Day saw thousands of extremists marching, journalists attacked

Kiev, 9.1.2015 0:18, (ROMEA) Several thousand Ukrainian extremists marched through Kiev with lit torches on 1 January to mark the 106th anniversary of the birth of Stepan Bandera, the leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Those participating in the assembly included supporters of the neo-Nazi Right Sector group and radical football fans.  full story

Young Roma at OSCE conference: We must increase our participation in public life

Belgrade, 8.1.2015 22:45, (ROMEA) More than 40 young activists across the OSCE region gathered on 8 and 9 December 2014 in Belgrade for a Conference on Roma and Sinti Youth. The meeting was organized by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and reviewed the opportunities for mobilizing and strengthening communities and galvanizing their participation in politics and decision-making processes.  full story

Czech Social Affairs Ministry: Quintuplets' parents deserve support

Prague, 8.1.2015 19:57, (ROMEA) The Czech Labor and Social Affairs Ministry has issued a press release in response to remarks made by Klára Vítková-Rulíková in an interview with the online news server iDNES.cz on 5 January 2015, including her interpretation of the alleged opinions of some ministry staffers about the first quintuplets born in the Czech Republic. According to the press spokesperson for the ministry, those remarks reflected the personal opinions of Ms Vítková-Rulíková alone and were not in accordance in any way with the ministry's position.  full story

Can Europe maintain hope of a free, open society? Nous sommes Charlie!

Prague, 8.1.2015 19:08, (ROMEA) The aim of the Islamist terrorists who committed murder yesterday in Paris is clear: This is their attempt to contribute toward the introduction of a regime that will decide what we can laugh at, what we must believe, how we are to behave, how we are to dress... and what we are to hate. Such a regime is based on contempt for minorities, on fear, inequality, and punishment.  full story

"Je suis Charlie" and "I like moderate Muslims"

Paris, 8.1.2015 18:19, (ROMEA) Some in France have responded to yesterday's mass murder in Paris by carring signs reading "Je suis Charlie" and "I like moderate Muslims". Islamist terrorists broke into the editorial offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, shooting 12 people dead and wounding others yesterday.  full story

Czech cities honor French shooting victims, freedom of speech

Prague, 8.1.2015 17:25, (ROMEA) Today in front of the French Embassy, people in Prague will be able to express their solidarity with the victims of Wednesday's shooting at the Paris offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, during which 12 people perished. The embassy has announced that the French community in the Czech Republic is convening the assembly.  full story

Miroslav Kováč: Let's be better parents in 2015

Prague, 8.1.2015 0:26, (ROMEA) The year 2014 was, from my perspective, a test for the "maturity" of Romani people in the Czech Republic, their ability to adapt to today's conditions and take advantage of the options offered by democracy to improve their position. A quarter of a century is enough time for us to start drawing on those experiences.  full story

Czech Police charge five with support for suppression of human rights over 1 May 2014 march

Ústí nad Labem, 7.1.2015 22:34, (ROMEA) Police have charged five persons who participated in last year's 1 May march in Ústí nad Labem with showing sympathy for a movement to suppress human rights and freedoms. The people were wearing banned symbols.  full story

Czech publicity about family of Romani quintuplets crosses the line

Prague, 7.1.2015 21:53, (ROMEA) Klára Vítková-Rulíková has become a celebrity. She became one by supporting the first quintuplets ever born in the Czech Republic and their family.  full story

Czech news server Protiproud claims that all Romani children are retarded

Prague, 7.1.2015 20:09, (ROMEA) The year 2015 has begun in the Czech Republic in one of the worst possible ways: With an hysterical, xenophobic campaign against Muslims and Romani people. Czech MP Tomio Okamura unleashed the hateful whirlwind of opinions with his "war on kebabs" and other quasi-fascist opinions have begun swarming like wasps.  full story

Commentary: Does Okamura have a future?

Prague, 6.1.2015 21:27, (ROMEA) There would be no point in returning to the hateful and stupid remarks by Tomio Okamura about Muslims and no point in covering them at all if a basic question were not hanging in the air: Does this indicate the future of our public discourse and politics? Unfortunately, such a future cannot be ruled out.  full story

Czech MP calls for harassment of Muslims

Prague, 6.1.2015 20:30, (ROMEA) Czech MP Tomio Okamura, the head of the "Dawn of Direct Democracy" (Úsvit) movement, has used online social networking to urge the public to harass Muslims in the country - for example, by "taking pigs for walks to relieve themselves" near mosques. Okamura told news server iDNES.cz that his call was not an incitement to intolerance and claimed to have consulted the text with lawyers before posting it.  full story

Czech media outlet reprints old, misleading information about Roma in UK

Prague, 6.1.2015 19:38, (ROMEA) News server Novinky.cz has published an article with the headline "French town doesn't want to bury Romani child who didn't pay taxes" that includes information more than a year old about the situation in the suburb of Sheffield in England. As in its previous reporting, the news server's current reporting is silent as to the results of a police investigation into the matter, which means and the information it has now (re)published is extremely misleading.  full story

France: Immigrant Romani infant buried near Paris after being refused burial elsewhere

Wissous, France, 6.1.2015 0:07, (ROMEA) In the community of Wissous near Paris a Romani infant was buried Monday during a ceremony attended by hundreds of people. The nearby small town of Champlan had previously refused her burial in their cemetery.  full story

Czech SocDems get new leadership in region to address local coalition with extremists

Teplice, 5.1.2015 21:27, (ROMEA) The new chair of the Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) in the Ústí Region is the Vice-Mayor of Štětí (Litoměřice district), Miroslav Andrt. He is replacing Radek Scherfer of Chomutov, who led the party in the region for the last two years.  full story

Slovak media depict Roma stereotypically and often anonymously

Bratislava, Slovakia, 3.1.2015 1:14, (ROMEA) They are dependent on state aid, impoverished, and uneducated, they commit crime more often than members of the majority part of society, and they have many children. That is what Romani people in Slovakia often look like through the eyes of the majority, and several media outlets are contributing to this stereotypical image  full story

Former Czech Foreign Minister does not believe his father was involved with the Lety camp

Prague, 2.1.2015 23:50, (ROMEA) Former Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg does not believe his father was involved at all in the establishment of the WWII-era camp at Lety by Písek. Radio Wave reports that he made the statement in response to claims by Paul Polansky that Schwarzenberg's father needed a cheap labor force in 1939 to clean up after a large blizzard and asked authorities to build a labor camp for that purpose.  full story