Czech Republic

Czech Housing for All initiative: We won't allow families to be split up

1.2.2013 3:31, (ROMEA) The Housing for All initiative has issued the following press release, which news server Romea.cz is publishing in full translation:  full story

Czech NGO: Some evicted families rejected housing options without giving a reason

1.2.2013 2:57, (ROMEA) The organization People in Need (Člověk v tísni) has issued a press release claiming that some families now being evicted from the residential hotel on Čelakovského street in Ústí nad Labem were assisted by their staffers with finding substitute accommodation and allegedly rejected the options offered to them. News server Romea.cz is publishing the press release below in full translation:  full story

videoCzech firm to evict residential hotel tenants tonight

Ústí nad Labem, 31.1.2013 14:55, (ROMEA) The situation at the residential hotel on Čelakovského street in the Krásné Březno quarter of Ústí nad Labem is escalating. The CPI Byty company, which owns the residential hotel, previously announced it would be shutting the building down today. Now the firm has posted a letter to the tenants on a bulletin board there informing them that unless they move out by 19:00 CET today, the company will intervene against them tomorrow morning.  full story

Housing for the poor a social time bomb in Czech Republic

Czech Republic, 29.1.2013 22:50, (ROMEA) The situation of the poorest people in this country is critical and neither municipalities nor the state are resolving it. There is no work for them, no equal education for them, and not enough dignified housing for them. A social time bomb is ticking here. Once it explodes, municipal and state representatives will "wash their hands of it" and make alibistic statements, as they always do on such occasions. The atmosphere in society is set for asocial behavior on the part of politicians. Poor people, including Romani people living in the ghettos, are indiscriminately considered parasites feeding off of the rest of us.  full story

Czech nonprofits: Some evicted families have been housed in Ústí

Ústí nad Labem, 29.1.2013 17:21, (ROMEA) The housing situation in Ústí nad Labem is critical, just as it is in other places throughout the Czech Republic. People are gradually moving out of the Předlice quarter there, where structural engineers say almost 30 buildings are now defective. For the time being this concerns a building on Beneše Lounského street which has been neglected by its owner and labeled unfit for human habitation by a structural engineer, but people will be moving out of the other buildings there in future.  full story

Czech Republic: Adopted son of Romani singer Věra Bílá found dead

Rokycany, 29.1.2013 1:23, (ROMEA) The 33-year-old adopted son of Romani singer Věra Bílá passed away this afternoon in the Czech town of Rokycany. His body was found in a public toilet. Police are investigating the cause of his death and have ordered an autopsy. News server iDNES.cz reports that the singer has confirmed the news and believes that someone murdered her adopted son František.  full story

Commentary: Czech Residency Bans will solve nothing

Litvínov, 29.1.2013 0:43, (ROMEA) Almost anything at all can be imagined as falling under the concept of democracy, and many of us are somehow prevented from understanding what kind of power we all acquired here in November 1989. Most of us have a basic problem with the very definition of democracy. It is, therefore, easily understandable why today's functionaries do not have to distance themselves from previous totalitarian practices, which seem democratic and excusable to us today, at least under their definition of democracy. The truth is that the achievement of real democracy is very complex, and navigating it is too complicated. Our society is not prepared for complications - or better said, it is not capable of compromise.  full story

On-line reporting of demonstration against evictions

Prague, 28.1.2013 23:52, (ROMEA) A new initiative called "Housing for All" (Bydlení pro všechny) has arisen in response to the ongoing scandal in the Czech town of Ústí nad Labem, where people where evicted from a building that was unfit for human habitation because the owner let it deteriorate and are now unable to find any normal, permanent housing. Starting at 14:00 CET a protest action took place in front of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in Prague. News server Romea.cz followed the demonstration on-line in real time.  full story

Czech Police arrest 12 after demo against evictions

Prague, 28.1.2013 23:15, (ROMEA) After today's demonstration against the eviction of families from a residential hotel in the Czech town of Ústí nad Labem, police officers arrested 12 people in Prague who refused to leave the building of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (MPSV). The transport of those arrested from the scene was accompanied by small-scale scuffles between approximately 30 demonstrators and the police  full story

Czech electorate chooses Miloš Zeman as the next president

Prague, 26.1.2013 19:48, (ROMEA) Miloš Zeman has been chosen by popular vote to become the next president of the Czech Republic. All votes have been counted.  full story

Czech Senator warns against hatred, racism, nationalism, xenophobia

Prague, 25.1.2013 17:14, (ROMEA) Speaking today at a gathering in the Czech Senate to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Senate Vice-Chair Alena Gajdůšková (Czech Social Democratic Party - ČSSD) said, "The greatest denial of the memory of the victims of the Holocaust victims would be if people were to allow a similar tragedy to repeat itself anywhere in the world. It would be an insult to the victims of the Shoah to allow antisemitic opinions and statements to be presented publicly without responding to them appropriately."  full story

Jarmila Balážová: I will vote for Karel Schwarzenberg

Prague, 24.1.2013 17:14, (ROMEA) It has been interesting to see what the first direct presidential election in the Czech Republic has unleashed and shown us. Even though some of this all could have been predicted, I really did not expect some of the responses I have seen, just as I did not expect certain people active in cultural and public life to back the candidates they are now backing.  full story

"Housing for All" to protest evictions at Czech Labor Ministry

Ústí nad Labem, 24.1.2013 16:26, (ROMEA) A new initiative called Housing for All (Bydlení pro všechny) is responding to the ongoing scandal in Ústí nad Labem, where people who once lived in a building that became unfit for habitation because the landlord let it deteriorate are now unable to find any normal, permanent housing. In the Předlice neighborhood, where the building in question is located, almost 30 other apartment buildings are also considered unsafe by structural engineers. The risk, therefore, is that more people will be evicted in future through no fault of their own - and no one knows where they will go.  full story

Czech extremists across the board want Zeman for president

Prague, 23.1.2013 17:28, (ROMEA) Both left and right-wing extremists have expressed their support for candidate Miloš Zeman in the upcoming presidential election. The ultra-left Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Komunistická strana Československa - KSČ), led by the pre-1989 communist boss Miroslav Štěpán, has given Zeman its backing. At a party congress this past weekend, the leader of the ultra-right extremist Workers' Social Justice Party (Dělnická strana sociální spravedlnosti - DSSS), Tomáš Vandas, expressed his support for Zeman as well.  full story

Zeman says he would not meet with the Dalai Lama if elected Czech President

Prague, 23.1.2013 16:29, (ROMEA) Speaking during a debate organized by the European Values (Evropské hodnoty) think-tank devoted primarily to foreign policy, presidential candidate Miloš Zeman (Strana práv občanů ZEMANOVCI - the Citizen's Rights Party for Zeman) said that if elected president of the Czech Republic he would refuse to meet with the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama - unless the Dalai Lama was visiting in the capacity of a big investor. Karel Schwarzenberg (TOP 09), who will be Zeman's opponent during the second round of presidential elections, did not participate in the discussion, reportedly for lack of time.  full story

Czech Women's Lobby wants Zeman to apologize for remarks about rape

23.1.2013 15:59, (ROMEA) The Czech Women's Lobby (Česká ženská lobby) wants presidential candidate Miloš Zeman to apologize for his recent remarks about rape as an evolutionary advantage. Zeman launched his bonmot during a televised debate last Friday when explaining to his opponent, the aristocrat Karel Schwarzenberg, why the nobility has degenerated. According to the Czech Women's Lobby, whose director, Jana Smiggels Kavková, has sent an open letter to Zeman, such remarks are insulting to all women.  full story

Civic initiatives ask senators to sue Czech president for treason over amnesty

Prague, 23.1.2013 15:27, (ROMEA) Businessman Karel Janeček, who describes himself as fighting corruption, has sent the members of the Czech Senate an appeal demanding that they discuss bringing a constitutional complaint against Czech President Klaus for treason as per Article 65 of the Constitution in connection with the prisoner amnesty he announced earlier this month. The appeal has been signed by 17 organizations including Public against Corruption (Veřejnost proti korupci) and Democracy Inventory (Inventura demokracie).  full story

How to vote in the second round of the Czech presidential election

23.1.2013 14:43, (ROMEA) Voting in the second round of the presidential elections in the Czech Republic will take place on Friday 25 January 2013 from 14:00 - 22:00 CET and on Saturday 26 January 2013 from 08:00 - 14:00 CET. Voters can choose between candidates Karel Schwarzenberg and Miloš Zeman.  full story

Czech court issues remarkable sentence in case of racist attack on Romani worker

Ostrava, 22.1.2013 4:35, (ROMEA) A first-instance court in the Czech Republic has handed down a verdict in the case of an assault committed against Mr Š.L. of Havířov last August. Judge Lubomíra Bínová sentenced a local youth, Martin Šmolka, to three years in prison without parole and ordered him to pay damages to the victim in the amount of CZK 100 000 (EUR 3 900). According to the court, the defendant (age 22) committed racially motivated grievous bodily harm and rioting (as per section 146, paras. 1, 2 letter e, 3; and section 358 of the Criminal Code).  full story

Czech Police propose charging 15 women with promoting neo-Nazism

Prague, 19.1.2013 19:44, (ROMEA) Detectives from the Czech Republic's Organized Crime Detection Unit (Útvar pro odhalování organizovaného zločinu - ÚOOZ) have proposed prosecuting 15 women charged with promoting and supporting the neo-Nazi movement Resistance Women Unity (RWU), according to ÚOOZ spokesperson Pavel Hanták. Police believe RWU is the women's branch of National Resistance (Národní odpor), an informal organization of Czech neo-Nazis. The women face up to eight years in prison if convicted.  full story