Analyses

Will Czech documentary about Romani activist unite, or divide?

Prague, 4.2.2015 19:59, (ROMEA) Ivo Bystřičan's documentary film "Opre Roma" sparked passionate discussion before it was even aired. There is no doubt that Romani activist Ivana Čonková, the film's central focus, is a prominent figure who has recently drawn a great deal of attention.  full story

The forgotten Holocaust: Romani victims of the Holocaust and their place in the Czech past and present

26.1.2015 23:19, (ROMEA) On 27 January 1945 the Red Army liberated the complex of Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz, where millions of people from all over Europe suffered and died. Among them were the Romani children, men and women in the so-called "Gypsy Family Camp" in one section of Auschwitz-Birkenau.  full story

Czech Republic: Experts believe schools will not open to the disadvantaged or to Romani children

Prague, 23.1.2015 3:03, (ROMEA) Czech society is divided, elitist, incapable of achieving consensus and intolerant. It is not likely that even the best-intended attempts at reforming the primary schools will succeed any time soon.  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

Czech media analysis: News about Roma makes money, but reporting is not objective

Prague, 2.1.2015 19:48, (ROMEA) As part of a project called "Reducing discrimination and racism by altering the media depiction of Romani people", supported by a grant from Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway through the EEA Grants, the ROMEA organization has published an introductory analysis of the depiction of Romani people in the Czech media in recent years. The aim of the project is to prevent society from shifting towards extremism and a radicalization of its relationship toward Romani people by doing our best to influence and eventually also modify how the media reports about Romani people.  full story

Will the Czech catalog of support measures eliminate injustice in education?

Czech Republic, 11.12.2014 20:52, (ROMEA) Writing in the fourth issue of Škola all inclusive magazine, Petra Klimková reports that the catalog of support measures announced by the Czech Education Ministry is a breakthrough in many respects. Not only will teachers be able to have, for the first time, a clear, single list of all of the professional experience accumulated to date regarding the education of disadvantaged pupils, but the document will also aid in eliminating the many injustices to which some children are exposed in the schools.  full story

Analysis of Czech, German and Hungarian trials of terrorist hate attacks

Prague, 21.11.2014 0:33, (ROMEA) In August of this year I reported that the trial of the alleged members of the international neo-Nazi network Blood & Honour here in the Czech Republic would begin in the fall. At the start of 2012 those defendants were charged with various crimes, including an arson attack on a building occupied by Romani families in the West Bohemian town of Aš.  full story

Commentary: No detente in sight for Israel-Palestine

Israel, 19.11.2014 15:10, (ROMEA) One week in solitary confinement and a fine of EUR 60 euros is the punishment that Marwan Barghouti, a leading member of the secular movement Fatah, has received for urging the Palestinian Authority to immediately end its security cooperation with Israel in a letter released on the 10th anniversary of Yasser Arafat's death. AFP reported that the 55-year-old militant, who is serving a life sentence on five counts of murder related to the second intifada in 2000, called for Palestinians to put up an "overall and armed resistance" against Israel.  full story

Romani politicans as part of the November 1989 Velvet Revolution

Prague, 17.11.2014 20:49, (ROMEA) A quarter of a century ago, the totalitarian regime under the leadership of the Communist Party fell in what was then Czechoslovakia - but how were Romani people involved in the so-called Velvet Revolution? Did you know that on 25 November 1989, 800 000 people gathered on Letná Plain in Prague chanted "Long live the Roma"?  full story

Czech President offends brave Russians who stood up for Czechoslovakia in 1968

Prague, 14.11.2014 23:16, (ROMEA) It seems that Czech President Miloš Zeman is striving so hard for the favor of the Chinese communists and the Putin supporters that he has no hesitation about insulting those who stood up for Czechoslovakia during her darkest hour. He may not have intended it that way, but part of what he said in his now world-famous radio program of 2 November has offended the sons of Natalya Gorbanevskaya as well as Russian dissident Victor Fainberg.  full story

Czech court rules that incitement to lynching is a felony

Prague, 13.11.2014 0:25, (ROMEA) Last Thursday the Prague Municipal Court reviewed the appeal of politician Otto Chaloupka against his conviction by the Prague 1 District Court for inciting hatred against an ethnic group. He had been sentenced at the start of September to six months' probation.  full story

The Purge: Czech local and Senate elections in 2014

Prague, 9.10.2014 23:01, (ROMEA) Aggression, hatred and vulgarity: These are the main features of the campaign in the runup to this weekend's local and Senate elections in the Czech Republic. What's more, intolerance, racism and xenophobia are not just fads being followed by what are traditionally extremist, obscure, small movements and parties.  full story

Czech trial of alleged neo-Nazi hard core postponed indefinitely

Prague, 7.10.2014 23:48, (ROMEA) Yesterday the third-instance trial of the allegedly hardcore members of a group called National Resistance (Národní odpor - NO) began in the Czech Republic. Its alleged members face up to eight years in prison for promoting Nazi propaganda as an organized group.  full story

Czech NGO analyses the multiple interpretations of proposed education amendment

Prague, 3.10.2014 17:32, (ROMEA) Section 16 of the much-discussed amendment to the School Act should be taught at law departments as a textbook example of how to create a law that can be interpreted for any purpose. The Czech NGO People in Need (Člověk v tísni) points this out on its website through an article recently published in Zvoní magazine.  full story

Czech ultra-right leader rails against Arab spa clients

Teplice, 29.9.2014 22:15, (ROMEA) Several people were arrested by police on Saturday during an assembly convened in the town of Teplice by the Workers' Social Justice Party (Dělnická strana sociální spravedlnosti - DSSS). Police spokesperson Dan Vítek announced the arrests.  full story

Analysis: Trial of violent death of Romani man at hands of Czech Police involves witness suicide attempt

Kynšperk/Sokolov, 23.9.2014 19:29, (ROMEA) In mid-September the trial of police officers from the town of Kynšperk resumed at the District Court in Sokolov. The Plzeň Regional State Prosecutor charged them with negligently causing the 2012 death of Mr Ľudovít Kašpar, a Romani man also from Kynšperk.  full story

Ian Hancock: 500 000 Romani Holocaust victims? There could have been twice that.

Prague, 22.8.2014 17:38, (ROMEA) The repeated number of 500 000 Romani deaths in the Porrajmos is becoming the conventional, accepted total. But we do not know this for a fact. The documentation has not been completely located nor analyzed. We must guard against this figure becoming the accepted total, appearing in the (small number of) books that even acknowledge the genocide of our people. Is it a move to diminish the extent of the mass murder, the samudaripen, in the eyes of the world? If this low estimate can be shown to be true, this is surely a cause for gladness. But the number, in reality, was in fact much higher.  full story

Gwendolyn Albert: Seven UN agencies issue joint statement on stopping forced, coercive, and involuntary sterilization

Imperial Beach, California (USA), 20.8.2014 15:20, (ROMEA) In May 2014, seven UN agencies - the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, UNAIDS, the United Nations Development Programme, UNICEF, the United Nations Population Fund, UN Women and the World Health Organization – jointly issued an interagency statement on eliminating forced, coercive and involuntary sterilization. The document reviews the many circumstances under which children, men and women have been sterilized against their will around the world and provides clear guidance to governments and the medical profession on how to bring these human rights abuses to an end.  full story

Jana Horváthová: Hodonín and Lety functioned as concentration camps

Brno, 5.8.2014 18:02, (ROMEA) Tomio Okamura is mistaken and his ignorant remarks have done further damage to his already-tarnished image. I am not very surprised, since as an historian I encounter relatively well-educated people rather often who mix up the various phases in the life of the camps that were in operation during the time of the Protectorate.  full story

Analysis: "Where is my home?" Not in the Czech Republic!

Prague, 22.7.2014 20:34, (ROMEA) Last Thursday and Friday in the city of Prague the National Meeting of People in Need of Housing took place. Homeless, impoverished people, whose opinions are usually ignored by most, developed interesting proposals during two days of concentrated work, proposals which, not surprisingly, could be used as a basis for addressing the problem of social housing here.  full story