News

Czech Republic: Demonstration against scandalous verdict acquitting Slovak Police of abusing Romani children

13.3.2015 23:27, (ROMEA) At the end of February a court in Slovakia acquitted police officers accused of having abused Romani children aged between 11 and 15 who had been suspected of injuring and robbing an older woman. According to the indictment, the officers forced the children to strip and to beat each other, among other things.  full story

Italian court orders withdrawal of textbook promoting anti-Romani prejudice

13.3.2015 20:53, (ROMEA) A court in Rome has found the publisher of a textbook for law students guilty of promoting prejudices against Romani people. Two separate initiatives promoting the rights of Romani people and a female Italian citizen of Romani origin have drawn attention to the case.  full story

Czech Republic: Ecumenical prayer against Islamophobes to take place in České Budějovice tomorrow

13.3.2015 20:24, (ROMEA) Tomorrow, Saturday 14 March, the "We Don't Want Islam in the Czech Republic" initiative will hold yet another demonstration, this time on Přemysl Otakar II. Square in the town of České Budějovice. In the Facebook announcement of the event, organizers led by Martin Konvička are tempting people to come by saying the event will feature the sale of propaganda items and refreshments and are attempting to ensure a big turnout by arranging for participants to drive there together.  full story

Council of Europe says there are still too many Romani children in the Czech "special schools"

12.3.2015 20:08, (ROMEA) The proportion of Romani pupils in "special schools" continues to be disproportionately high in the Czech Republic, but measures seeking to introduce inclusive education - the enrollment of all children into mainstream schools - could bring about positive change. Those are the findings adopted by the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers today.  full story

Czech President appoints Justice Minister Pelikán, known for his anti-racist work

Prague, 12.3.2015 18:43, (ROMEA) Czech President Miloš Zeman has appointed a new Justice Minister today. Robert Pelikán, a 35-year-old lawyer, now holds the post.  full story

Czech Republic: Romani youth beaten by police says officers told him he would die

Prague, 11.3.2015 22:58, (ROMEA) "I feared for my life," a Romani 19-year-old who recently experienced the worst date of his life told news server Romea.cz - the incident resulted in his fleeing through a forest at night and ended with his being unfit to return to work for more than a month. Nicolas Kurej contacted the ROMEA organization, which provides aid to victims of discrimination and hate violence, claiming he had been beaten up in two location, one of them a forest on the outskirts of Prague, in a brutal way by three men, two of whom were uniformed police officers from the Prague 14 Local Department of the Police of the Czech Republic.  full story

Commentary: Czech mayor declares war on "inadaptables" again

11.3.2015 19:12, (ROMEA) Mayor Jiří Čunek (Christian Democrats) has announced to the Czech News Agency that the town hall in Vsetín is establishing a working group on the issue of "inadaptables" and will "seek measures to make the town calm and safe and options for stopping these groups of inhabitants or individuals from causing problems and tensions in town." The Czech News Agency reports that the mayor believes the town hall needs to review whether its position on rent defaulters or other citizens who have repeated problems with maintaining order might be too generous in some cases.  full story

Director of Czech Gov't agency says petition against "gypsies" to PM is really about real estate

10.3.2015 19:10, (ROMEA) Dissatisfied citizens living at the Janov housing estate in the town of Litvínov have sent a petition to the Czech Government calling for a rigorous solution to their problems - they claim it is no longer possible to live there because of the "gypsy minority terrorizing the majority". They have also expressed concern that a hard-hitting anti-Romani event similar to the ones that took place there in 2008, which they call a "small-scale civil war", could be repeated.  full story

Commentary: America's "Bloody Sunday" 50 years on - racism is not yet defeated

9.3.2015 20:53 Fifty years ago, police in Selma, a town in the southern United States, attacked a peaceful demonstration by roughly 600 activists, most of them Black. Officers used tear gas and truncheons, and images flew around the world of one of the organizers, Amelie Obynton, lying unconscious on the ground.  full story

Greek court acquits Golden Dawn MP of assaulting female politicians

Athens, Greece, 9.3.2015 19:19, (ROMEA) On Friday, 6 March, a court in Greece acquitted an MP from the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn who physically assaulted two female left-wing politicians in 2012 during a live television broadcast. The Associated Press reports that a judge has decided that legislator Ilias Kasidiaris did not cause the women grievous bodily harm, as the charges read.  full story

Czech Republic: Work by Aleš Veselý to be featured as part of Memorial of Silence

Prague, 9.3.2015 17:42, (ROMEA) A sizable statue by the sculptor Aleš Veselý in the form of railroad tracks heading to heaven will be part of the Memorial of Silence (Památník ticha) to be installed at Prague's Bubny train station. The location is slated to become not just a place for recalling the tragic history of the transports of Jews to the concentration camps, but also a center for discussions about the Holocaust and its legacy today  full story

Czech Republic: Audit of Romani newspaper finds no wrongdoing

9.3.2015 16:31, (ROMEA) On 11 January, Pavel Pečinka, the former Editor-in-Chief of the Romano hangos periodical, wrote to Czech Culture Minister Daniel Herman to say the publication had become a family business run in a non-transparent way with strange accounting practices and demanding an investigation. Several days ago the ministry undertook an audit and found no such problems at the editorial office.  full story

Czech Republic: Vandas re-elected DSSS chair

Prague, 9.3.2015 0:57, (ROMEA) The Workers' Social Justice Party (Dělnická strana sociální spravedlnosti - DSSS) will be led for the next two years by its only chair to date, Tomáš Vandas (age 46). At the party's convention yesterday, 90 of the 92 delegates participating voted for him.  full story

Romani hockey player pushes Spiš into the Slovak Extraliga

Spišká Nová Ves, Slovakia, 8.3.2015 2:56, (ROMEA) The Spišská Nová Ves hockey club, which won the opening of the Slovak Premiere League, is now fighting in the playoffs with Detva to advance into the Slovak Extraliga, and the excellent atmosphere in the stands pushing their players forward has been provided for several years now by local Romani fans. They come to do more than cheer on just "their" player, František Koky.  full story

Norwegian, UK, US ambassadors to Czech Republic praise nonprofit and school for Romani inclusion in Trmice

Trmice, 7.3.2015 21:07, (ROMEA) The Norwegian Ambassador to the Czech Republic, Siri Ellen Sletner, UK Ambassador to the Czech Republic Jan Thompson, and US Ambassador to the Czech Republic Andrew Shapiro have praised a nonprofit organization and a primary school in the town of Trmice as a good example of how social inclusion should work. Trmice is considered a socially excluded locality; more than one-third of the children attending the local school are Romani.  full story

Czech Trade Inspection Authority investigating firms leasing apartments at Janov housing estate

7.3.2015 20:13, (ROMEA) The long-term experience of Romani apartment-seekers in the town of Litvínov is unequivocal: Apartments are only available for them to lease at the Janov housing estate. Over the past few years a ghetto has gradually been created there.  full story

Czech opinion poll: Roma still the least-liked

Prague, 7.3.2015 2:09, (ROMEA) Of the various national groups living in the Czech Republic, sympathy for Arabs, Greeks, Jews and Serbs has declined compared to last year, according to a February survey by the Center for Public Opinion Research (CVVM). As in previous surveys, people continued to express the most sympathy for ethnic Czechs and Slovaks and the least sympathy for Romani people
 full story

Czech Republic: "Living Library" combats prejudice

Prague, 7.3.2015 1:26, (ROMEA) "This has definitely helped me in that I became aware, from their stories, of how hard life can be for people," says high school student Agáta Matějková of her experience with the Living Library. She won't be borrowing Čapek or Hemingway there, but she is able to speak with the "books" she chooses - literally.  full story

Janov residents petition Czech PM over "gypsies"

7.3.2015 0:10, (ROMEA) Residents of the Janov housing estate in the town of Litvínov who are calling themselves the "decent majority" have sent a petition to Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka. The residents are asking the state to aggressively intervene in their neighborhood.  full story

Interview with director of documentary film about Romani girls

Prague, 6.3.2015 21:55, (ROMEA) Perla is a Romani girl growing up in a slum in the east of Slovakia. Jenica is a Romani girl growing up in an impoverished suburb of Paris.  full story