Analyses

Analysis: The Czech state's response to the "Year of Extremism"

Prague, 18.7.2014 22:18, (ROMEA) Last year extremists in the Czech Republic convened a total of 272 events, 136 fewer than in 2012 - at least according to the Czech Interior Ministry. So, did we all just imagine those frequent street battles between demonstrators and police last year, or is someone intentionally making fun of us here?  full story

Analysis: Vlastimil Pechanec - neo-Nazi martyr or hard-core murderer?

Prague, 17.7.2014 18:37, (ROMEA) On 21 July 2014 it will be 13 years since Otto Absolon, a father of two young children, died at the hands of a local neo-Nazi, Vlastimil Pechanec, in the East Bohemian town of Svitavy. At the end of last month, Mr Absolon's murderer was conditionally released from prison.  full story

videoBBC: England team's first Romany footballer 'deserves recognition'

London, 19.6.2014 17:01, (ROMEA) In 1895 Rabbi Howell made history as the first Romany footballer to play for England, but 119 years on the pioneering player lies buried in an unmarked grave. Now as an appeal to raise funds for a headstone begins, what is the story behind Howell's ground-breaking career and have sporting attitudes to the Romany community changed?  full story

Commentary: Czech Roma Strategy should support the Romani intelligentsia more

Prague, 18.6.2014 0:37, (ROMEA) Despite all of the concepts and efforts expended to date, the situation of Romani people in the Czech Republic is deteriorating. According to estimates, 80 000 - 100 000 Romani people (an estimated one-third of all Roma living in the Czech Republic) are grappling with burdensome problems of social exclusion.  full story

Czech Police again report fabricated attack by "dark-skinned" person as real

Prague/Jihlava, 8.6.2014 3:24, (ROMEA) The Czech Police evidently still do not know how to go about publicizing information from their investigations. Many examples to back up this claim exist, but the most recent is, of course, the most typical: The existence of fabricated reports of "muggings" which the police (and subsequently, several media outlets) present to the public as having actually occurred through their initially poorly-formulated press releases.  full story

Analysis: Extremists, nationalists, and populists score big gains at EP

European Union, 26.5.2014 22:27, (ROMEA) The elections to the European Parliament have brought the greatest success to date to a wide variety of extremists, nationalists and populists whose popularity has grown. Such groups were particularly victorious in Britain, Denmark and France.  full story

Analysis: Czech parties defaming Roma during EP campaign

Prague, 16.5.2014 21:52, (ROMEA) The Parliament of the European Union definitely has a lot to look forward to from the Czech Republic this year. Famous antigypsyists and con artists who believe we have forgotten about their past crimes are planning to get to Brussels by playing the anti-Roma card.  full story

Analysis: Czech verdict means it's a crime to stop an armed brawl

Prague, 1.4.2014 20:57, (ROMEA) Last month the Regional Court in Ústí nad Labem handed down its first-instance verdict in the case of the violent death of Mr Ivan J. In May 2013, Mr J. was stabbed twice during the celebrations of the opening of the spa season in the Czech town of Teplice and succumbed to his wounds shortly thereafter.  full story

Analysis: What the Czech media ignore about Ukraine

Prague, 24.3.2014 19:19, (Romano Voďi) This article was written for the print edition of Romano vod'i magazine at the start of March.  full story

Analysis: If the Czech state buys residential hotels, only the traffickers in poverty will win

Prague, 13.3.2014 22:10, (ROMEA) Deputy Ombud Stanislav Křeček believes that the Czech state should start running residential hotels because they represent an immoral business that no one else can fix. That sounds logical, overall - we do have this problem here, and the state should see to its solution  full story

Czech human rights record poor on minorities

Prague, 5.3.2014 20:34, (ROMEA) As news server Romea.cz reported last week, the annual human rights report by the US State Department says societal discrimination and violence against Romani people were a serious problem in the Czech Republic last year. Below is the section of the report entitled "National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities":  full story

Analysis: What if the Czech MP clears the neo-Nazi?

Litvínov, 27.1.2014 10:06, (ROMEA) Tomio Okamura, known to the Czech public as a more acceptable alternative to Tomáš Vandas, the chair of the ultra-right Workers' Social Justice Party (DSSS), has paid a visit to neo-Nazi Vlastimil Pechanec at the prison in Pardubice where he is serving a 17-year sentence for the murder of Otto Absolon, a Romani man. Okamura believes Pechanec's trial by three first-instance judges, three appeals court judges, and three Supreme Court justices was manipulated and politicized.  full story

Markus Pape: Freedom of speech vs. promotion of violence

Prague, 21.1.2014 22:08, (ROMEA) Freedom of speech is a basic human right. If it is violated, that can endanger the protection of other human rights.  full story

Markus Pape: Czech Republic's most serious racial attack of 2013 on trial

Teplice / Ústí nad Labem , 17.1.2014 0:52, (ROMEA) Next Monday the Regional Court in Ústí nad Labem will review the most serious case of racially motivated violence to have occurred in 2013. During the celebrations around the opening of the spa in the town of Teplice, a non-Romani man working at an outdoor sausage stand seriously injured several Romani youths with a knife before stabbing a random Romani passer-by to death directly in front of the Teplice town hall.  full story

Analysis: Czech politicians don't understand the law and Roma pay the price

Prague, 21.12.2013 0:17, (ROMEA) After 1989, Czech society resolved to "build, protect and develop the Czech Republic in the spirit of the inalienable values of human dignity and freedom as the home of free citizens who are aware of their obligations towards others and of their responsibility to the community, as a free and democratic State founded on respect for human rights and on principles of civil society, as a member of the family of European and world democracies." This beautiful idea is incorporated into the preamble of the Czech Constitution.  full story

Analysis: Czech media uninterested in civil society critique of senators' antigypsyism

Prague, 29.11.2013 22:26, (ROMEA) The Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic is part of our democratic system and should therefore honor the Constitution of the Czech Republic, including the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms that is a part of that constitutional order. Senators who speak during sessions of the upper chamber are representing the Czech Republic as a democratic state governed by the rule of law to the nation and the rest of the world.  full story

Analysis of Czech Police strategy for anti-Roma hate marches during 2013

Prague, 25.11.2013 16:03, (ROMEA) When at the end of May the traveling circus of this year's series of hate marches first broke out in the northern Bohemian town of Duchcov, the Czech Police behaved as of "ordinary citizens" had never before joined such neo-Nazi actions before. For experts on this issue who witnessed the unrest in the Šluknov area in 2011, the memories are fresh.  full story

Will there ever be more Romani politicians in Germany?

Berlin/Prague, 12.11.2013 22:51, (ROMEA) It is no easy task to write about the active participation of Roma and Sinti in German politics, not that the information on this topic is kept secret somehow. The problem, rather, is that there have not been many activities to date that could be considered essentially political.  full story

Image of Roma in the Czech media during 2013

Prague, 1.11.2013 1:19, (ROMEA) A second round table for journalists organized by the ROMEA association was held in Prague on 31 October. Ivan Vodochodský, an analyst with the Newton Média company, and representatives of ROMEA presented their joint analysis, entitled "Stereotypes in the Media Image of Roma during 2013" (Stereotypy mediálního obrazu Romů v roce 2013 - available in Czech only at http://www.mediainfo.cz/clanky/romove-v-neklidne-dobe/).  full story

Analysis: Why Czech ultra-right voters chose Okamura, not the DSSS

Prague, 30.10.2013 0:20, (ROMEA) Czech Senator Tomio Okamura and his "Dawn of Direct Democracy" (Úsvit přímé demokracie) party won a surprising 6.88 % of the recent vote for the lower house. The party's extreme opinions border on fascism and it is evidently no accident that its name is very similar to that of the Greek right-wing extremist party Golden Dawn.  full story