Czech Republic

Children stone flamingo to death in zoo, Czech Internet users blame all Roma, protest march scheduled

17.3.2017 11:47 Photographs of a flamingo that three Romani children stoned to death in the zoo in the Czech town of Jihlava are making the rounds of social networking sites. Emotions sparked by the incident have immediately spun the wheel of hatred and a march, ostensibly to draw attention to the security situation there, has now been scheduled for the end of the month.   full story

Patrik Banga: I'm for collecting ethnic data in all areas, but the majority can't tell who is Romani

17.3.2017 10:17 Ivan Langr (Greens), Vice-Mayor of Liberec in charge of social affairs, has rebelled against the methodology recommended for estimating the number of Romani people in the regions that he has received from the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic. As has already happened here more than once, Langr has sparked a tempestuous
discussion about whether estimating the numbers of Romani people should even happen and if so, what the appropriate method is to use.  full story

Interview with Czech Vice-Mayor who believes the Govt method for identifying Romani people crosses the line

17.3.2017 8:57

Ivan Langr, the Vice-Mayor of Liberec who is opposed to the "Romani census" that the Czech Government requires for its annual report on the state of the Romani minority, has taken a sharp stand recently. He has even compared the method of estimating who is Romani according to people's appearance to the approaches taken by members of the SS during the Second World War. 

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Czech Vice-Mayor says Czech Govt's method for collecting data about Romani people is "inhumane"

16.3.2017 10:55 The Czech town of Liberec is refusing to send a report about the state of the Romani minority to the Regional Authority for delivery to the Office of the Czech Government. Such a report has, for years, served as background material for a nationwide report on that issue.  full story

Czech association of local residents wants to clean up and revive the Předlice ghetto

15.3.2017 7:57 "We are a group of people, non-Roma and Roma, who can no longer watch the situation in the Předlice quarter of Ústí nad Labem, where most of us live. We do not want
Předlice to continue to be considered the worst neighborhood in the Czech Republic, to persist as a ghetto. We want to put Předlice back on its feet, solve its problems, and activate its inhabitants," reads the manifesto of the AMARE Předlice association, which was created at the beginning of this year.  full story

Czech Republic: Romani quintuplets finally receive donations

15.3.2017 7:22 Last week the City of Prague disbursed roughly CZK 616 000 [EUR 23 000] to the mother of the first-ever quintuplets in the Czech Republic, Alexandra Kiňová, from the
collection to which people had contributed in support of her children. Vít Hofman, spokesperson for Prague City Hall, announced the news on Monday.  full story

"Baruvas" Romani student meeting in Brno, Czech Republic confirms that education makes sense

14.3.2017 7:11 "It was a brilliant feeling to see Romani people around me who are interested in education, who are motivated, who have dreams and vision. I am glad that none of us are alone in this now. Personally, it gave me a lot of new energy and appetite to work on myself even more, because I have the hope that it makes sense to do so," says Martin Dudi, a student of Philosophy and Religion at the South Bohemian University who attended a meeting of Romani college and high school students, "Baruvas", that took place in Brno during the first weekend in March.  full story

Czech HateFree campaign will continue in a different form, Govt issues statement fully backing its manager

13.3.2017 6:55 The Czech Government's HateFree Culture campaign will continue next year in a different form. Deputy Human Rights Minister Martina Štěpánková informed members of the
lower house of the decision on 7 March.  full story

Czech online media pro believes turning on critical thinking is easier than censoring the Internet

12.3.2017 21:06 At the beginning of March, the ROMEA organization used its Facebook page to broadcast a second live educational webinar, this time featuring lecturer Pavel Kasík, an editor at Technet.cz, and a young student of andragogy, Denisa Maková on how to discuss fake news on the Internet and social networking sites with others. "Whenever anybody believes he or she knows something, it's very difficult to demonstrate to that person that basically he or she does not," Kasík said in the introduction, describing one of the problems he has encountered during his work in the media.  full story

Czech disinformation outlet misinforms readers that a refugee camp "like Calais" is growing in Prague

11.3.2017 21:29 The dissemination of disinformation and fake news to manipulate Czech readers takes various forms. A fresh example from the Czech tabloid Parlamentní listy demonstrates that the images used in news reporting play a significant role in such efforts.  full story

Czech Government approves social housing bill, ANO insists on reservations

11.3.2017 12:02 The long-anticipated, much-discussed social housing bill will now make its way to the Czech Chamber of Deputies. The bill's authors claim it should reduce trafficking in poverty and was approved by the Government on 8 March, according to cabinet spokesperson Martin Ayrer.  full story

Czech Republic: NGO disagrees with court that principal discriminated against Romani preschoolers

11.3.2017 10:45 The Life Together (Vzájemné soužití) organization has issued a statement of support for the principal of the Pěší Primary School in Ostrava-Muglinova which, according to a judgment by the District Court in Ostrava, discriminated against two Romani preschoolers when it refused to enroll them into first grade in 2014. The organization disagrees with the court that principal Kamil Krahula behaved in a discriminatory fashion when making that decision.  full story

Czech Human Rights Minister wants Lety concentration camp memorial administered by Museum of Romani Culture, relative of victims disagrees

11.3.2017 8:03 Czech Minister for Human Rights, Equal Opportunities and Legislation Jan Chvojka declared on the occasion of a ceremony to commemorate the victims of the Romani Holocaust held on Tuesday, 7 March at the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno that he intends for the Museum to administer the memorial to the victims of the Romani Holocaust at Lety u Písku instead of the current administrator, the Lidice Memorial. "The minister will advocate for administration of the memorial at Lety to fall under the Museum of Romani Culture," the minister's press spokesperson, Michal Kačírek, confirmed to news server Romea.cz on 9 March.  full story

Czech Police propose charging four people for neo-Nazi graffiti on businesses in the HateFree Zone

9.3.2017 8:52 Police in Prague, Czech Republic have proposed charging four people with spray-painting neo-Nazi symbols on businesses and cafes involved in the Czech Government's
HateFree Zone project. Prosecution of a fifth defendant has been temporarily suspended.
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Analysis: The 2016 arson attack on Klinika Social Center - are the Czech Police incompetent, or omniscient?

7.3.2017 9:58 How can we recognize the democratic rule of law? In addition to many other factors, equality of all before the law is one sure way.  full story

Director of Czech NGO says Karlovy Vary Region suffers in terms of education

6.3.2017 13:28 In the year 2001, Trappist monks chose to use the agricultural area of a former Baroque-era estate in the town of Nový Dvůr as a monastery and initiated the creation of a nonprofit organization called Český západ (Bohemian West) in the excluded localities of the Teplice and Toužim area. The headquarters of the NGO are located one kilometer away, in the town of Dobrá Voda, near a prefabricated apartment building inhabited predominantly by Romani community members.  full story

Czech court fines politician for bribery and extortion in attempt to buy votes of Romani people

6.3.2017 9:38 News server Aktuálně.cz has reported that on 24 February the Municipal Court in Prague upheld the first-instance conviction of a former council member of the Prague-Letňany Municipal Department, Jan Mikulecký (for the Civic Democratic Party - ODS), over events during the 2014 municipal elections. Mikulecký must pay a fine of CZK 100 000 [EUR 3 700] for bribery and extortion or spend nine months in prison.  full story

Interview with Fedor Gál: It took me years to get that "solving the Romani problem" is nonsense

6.3.2017 7:44 When, eight years ago, we entered into the story of Natálka, the Romani infant who suffered burns during a neo-Nazi arson attack on her home in Vítkov, we had a messianic complex, Slovak sociologist Fedor Gál says in an interview for HlídacíPes.org, excerpted in translation below. A group of people from various professions got together to "supervise" how the family was managing to cope with the tragedy.  full story

Czech Republic: Romani child adopted by a non-Romani family tells his story

4.3.2017 11:31 Otakar Chládek (age 21) was born in and grew up in the Pardubice Region and holds a certificate as a waiter from the Zámek High School for Crafts, Services and Trades in Žamberk, Czech Republic. He currently is attending a medical course for emergency medical technicians and would like to complete his secondary education after that.  full story

Czech court rules that school ethnically discriminated against Romani children by rejecting their enrollment

3.3.2017 12:35 The Pěší Primary School in Ostrava-Muglinova discriminated against two Romani preschoolers when it refused to enroll them into first grade in 2014, according to a ruling by the District Court there. The court found that the school was attempting to unjustifiably regulate the number of Romani children in the first grade class.  full story