Commentary

Commentary: Romani actors play only primitive criminals in Czech tv serial

Prague, 8.11.2013 20:31, (ROMEA) A few days ago, Lukáš Senft, a documentary filmmaker and student at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, published an open letter to screenwriter Ivan Hubač and director Filip Renč, the creators of the tv serial "Sanitka 2", which is known to everyone from the time of the previous regime. In his letter, the author criticizes primarily the eighth episode of this serial and its depiction of the Romani minority as a dangerous, foreign, and incomprehensible group.  full story

Čeněk Růžička: We can fight back if necessary, but what about our children? Go vote!

Prague, 23.10.2013 0:05, (ROMEA) Romale, I presume you are all noticing how a large proportion of the political candidates are speaking about us in the television debates, how so-called experts on Romani people are proposing solutions for our lives. Notice how almost all of those solutions call for forceful measures - we're going to increase the numbers of police officers in the streets, hire police assistants, introduce CCTV systems in troubled localities.  full story

Commentary: In the Czech Republic, the Roma's image could get them killed

Prague, 21.10.2013 16:38, (ROMEA) This past spring the third - and so far the greatest - wave of anti-Romani protests has risen up in the Czech Republic. The first such wave, from 2007-2009, resulted in what was the most serious arson attack to date on a Romani family here in the town of Vítkov, and in the arrest of the perpetrators in August 2009. The second such wave, from 2011-2012, ended with a march by 2 000 people through the town of Břeclav, where locals and out-of-towners passionately protested an alleged attack by Romani people on a 15-year-old boy. One month later, it was proven that he had invented the entire story.  full story

Commentary: DSSS "keeping order on the streets" in Duchcov

Duchcov, 19.10.2013 0:53, (ROMEA) Convicted criminals and Nazis are maintaining order on the streets of a town. That sentence sounds like it describes 1930s Germany, but it is neither the first nor the last parallel that can be drawn between today, the interwar era, and the course of daily life during both totalitarian periods in Central Europe.  full story

Jarmila Balážová: Czech Green Party bravely runs Romani candidates despite social atmosphere

Prague, 14.10.2013 19:39, (ROMEA) In recent days one of the most significant political events in the post-1989 era ever to concern Romani people and their participation in real decision-making (i.e., not just "advising" the authorities) about matters that influence hundreds of thousands of citizens of this country has taken place. A great deal has already being written here about Romani education, inclusion, integration, segregation, the "special" schools and the inability of Romani people to become more involved in designing the politics and strategies that influence their lives.  full story

Commentary: Romani unemployment endangers the Czech economy

13.10.2013 21:56, (ROMEA) According to estimates by the Czech Labor Office, the number of unemployed Romani people has significantly grown in recent years. While official statistics are not kept about the ethnicity of the unemployed, the Labor Office has produced its estimate for the Office of the Government to use as part of its reporting on how it is fulfilling its obligations as part of the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015.  full story

Patrik Banga: Counting Romani children in the schools? Yes!

Prague, 27.9.2013 1:07, (ROMEA) The Czech School Inspectorate has asked school directors to count the number of Romani pupils with light mental disability in their schools. The Czech Education Ministry needs this data in order to demonstrate to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg that the number of Romani children ending up with the "light mental disability" label because of prejudice has been decreasing in the Czech Republic.  full story

Lukáš Houdek: When Romani people don't speak "gypsy" right

Prague, 26.9.2013 22:44, (ROMEA) Here it is! Romani people causing problems once more!  full story

David Beňák: Affordable housing policy would eliminate need for special welfare

Prague, 25.9.2013 17:55, (ROMEA) The general affordability of housing in the Czech Republic varies widely. There are also many problems on the housing market, including discrimination.  full story

Commentary: Neo-Nazis don't belong in Kraslice, they just want money and violence

Kraslice, 7.9.2013 0:00, (ROMEA) Tomorrow a hate march will be held in the town of Kraslice in the Karlovy Vary region. Under the pretext of an election rally, the march is being convened by the neo-Nazi DSSS party, led by Tomáš Vandas.  full story

Commentary: Protection under the law applies to everyone equally, it's shameful to traffic in it

Prague, 6.9.2013 22:04, (ROMEA) When I read the news recently that representatives of a group of Roma in Ostrava had offered to turn in delinquents in exchange for better police protection against right-wing extremists, I thought it was a bad joke. It wasn't.  full story

Czech Republic: The two faces of ODS - Populism vs. reality

Prague, 4.9.2013 17:55, (ROMEA) On 23 August 2013, the press spokesperson for the Civic Democratic Party (Občanská demokratická strana - ODS) verbally promised that the party would be issuing a statement on the anti-Roma demonstrations planned for the next day across the country. The party has yet to issue an official statement on those events.  full story

Commentary: Experts and extremists at Czech Television

Prague, 1.9.2013 22:21, (ROMEA) At public broadcaster Czech Television (ČT), anyone can be a sociologist. All it takes is to blame everything on the "inadaptables."  full story

Commentary: Frustration, political vacuum, and a society without vision

Prague, 1.9.2013 1:06, (ROMEA) It is both remarkable and symptomatic that the unrest in the Czech Republic this summer and the increasingly oppressive atmosphere in society is receiving no response from the country's political representatives. They are all so overwhelmed by their own operations, by the ongoing chaos and the "fight for parliamentary democracy" here that they have no energy left for what is going on beyond the walls of their party secretariats.  full story

Commentary: Are Czech academics and politicians giving cover to neo-Nazis?

Prague, 7.8.2013 15:44, (ROMEA) Prior to this past weekend's neo-Nazi demonstration in Vítkov, sociologist Jan Keller participated in a press briefing convened by the Moravian-Silesian Regional Police on the issue. His controversial comments there have prompted a great deal of response (video of the briefing, in Czech only, is available at http://www.romea.cz/cz/zpravodajstvi/martin-fafejta-dava-jan-keller-kryti-ceskym-nackum-a-kryji-je-cesti-politici).  full story

Robert Rustem: Le Point’s editor should resign after ‘Hitler and the Roma’ poll stunt

Brussels, 26.7.2013 11:19, (ROMEA) With breath-taking speed, Europe moves from one ugly episode to the next in its summer rampage against Roma people.  full story

Valeriu Nicolae: Blacklisted – the new low of the European Commission

Bucharest, 26.7.2013 10:33, (ROMEA) Last week a close friend told me that the European Commission blacklisted the NGO she works for. I used to work for the same NGO in the past. The members of the network are people I know for a long time- people I am proud to have worked with- committed and hardworking.  full story

Commentary: The structure of hatred

Prague, 22.7.2013 23:08, (ROMEA) A society dominated by relationships of competition, one where the argument that "the ends justify the means" is considered valid, creates lightning rods out of phenomena it doesn't know how to deal with or doesn't want to handle. In this society, those phenomena are homeless people and especially Romani people. Here, if you give these people a kick, you can easily justify your actions as moral.  full story

Miroslav Kováč: Let's abolish all welfare for everyone!

Prague, 16.7.2013 21:54, (ROMEA) Recently I have observed online, on the street, at anti-Romani demonstrations, and even from the lips of politicians that many in the Czech Republic believe Romani people here enjoy an above-average standard of living because of thos country's generous social welfare system. I am Roma and I happen to live in the real world, traveling to various so-called excluded localities (I even used to live in one myself). As a citizen who knows the law and is familiar with this issue, I have decided to share my knowledge with those in the majority population who are ignorant of the facts, especially with those who, perhaps because of laziness (at best) have succumbed to all the quasi-fascist hoaxes, myths and populism on this issue, those who term themselves the "decent people" but scoff at the laws, as well as those politicians who make it directly possible for the corrupt to increase their personal bank accounts abroad by adopting various "measures" through which our asset-stripped "state coffers" are supposed to be "filled".  full story

Commentary: Why does the phrase "white aggressor" bother readers?

Prague, 2.7.2013 15:58, (ROMEA) Recently, in many articles published by Czech media outlets across the spectrum, we see the following expressions being used more and more often: "Romani aggressor" or the plural "Romani aggressors", "Romani racist aggressors", "brutal Romani gang", "violent Romani man", "a group of aggressors (Romani, of course)", "six aggressors (Romani)". The neo-Nazis Dufek and Svoboda, who organized demonstrations not long ago in Duchcov against Romani people (all of them), used the slogan: "Against the Romani aggressors".  full story