Czech Republic

Czech Republic: Christian refugees from Iraq slowly find housing and jobs

15.7.2016 14:24 The 40 Iraqi Christians who were brought to the Czech Republic a couple of months ago by the Generation 21 Foundation have moved into rental housing and are learning Czech. Some of the adults are also beginning to work.  full story

Romani civil society member of advisory body to Czech Government resigns over failure to remove pig farm from genocide site

15.7.2016 9:21 Miroslav Zima, the director of Drom, a Romani Center, resigned last month from the Czech Government Inter-ministerial Commission on Roma Community Affairs. One of the
reasons for his resignation is the fact that the pig farm has not yet been removed from the site of the WWII era "Gypsy camp" at Lety by Písek.
 full story

Czech Police to get new powers to disperse assemblies, spontaneous demonstrations will not have legal protection

14.7.2016 9:23 The option of being able to hold a spontaneous public assembly without first announcing it to the authorities will not be enshrined in law as the Government previously
proposed. The parameters for those entitled to announce such a public gathering to local authorities will also not be expanded, but police officers will be given new powers to disperse an assembly directly.  full story

Commentary: Czech anti-immigrant MP has a math problem

12.7.2016 8:36 The Czech politician Tomio Okamura has reported through Facebook and Twitter, as well as through his video blog, that "Muslim migrants are primarily responsible for the number of rapes in Sweden growing by a multiple of more than 1 500". Since such a claim naturally attracts our attention, let's take a look at it.  full story

Czech Republic: Autonomous Social Center Klinika is again open to the public, court overturns preliminary injunction

11.7.2016 14:27 The Autonomous Social Center Klinika in Prague opened to the public again on 7 July after several weeks of closure. The Municipal Court in Prague has overturned a preliminary injunction banning the center from operating.  full story

Half of the Roma in the Czech Republic live in social exclusion, members of the middle class face ethnic intolerance

11.7.2016 6:47 Half of the Romani people living in the Czech Republic are socially excluded. According to qualified estimates made by the coordinators for Romani minority affairs who work at local and regional level, that is more than 113 000 people.  full story

Czech politician files criminal report against activist who set a copy of the Quran on fire

10.7.2016 12:07 The Brno-based politician Svatopluk Bartík (Žít Brno) has filed criminal charges against Martin Konvička, head of an Islamophobic initiative now named after himself ("The Initiative of Martin Konvička"), who provoked outrage last week in front of a mosque in Brno. Konvička and his followers said they were "defending Czech culture" by setting fire to the Quran, holding a fashion show of scantily-clad women, drinking beer, and eating goulash and hot dogs.  full story

Czech Republic: Roma report racism to Facebook after calls for "gypsies" to be set on fire are posted

8.7.2016 8:34 A person presenting herself on Facebook as "Bára Fictumová" now awaits criminal investigation after two Romani people, the well-known activist Jan Čonka and journalist Patrik Banga, filed a report of criminal activity over a post on that page. Fictumová has sadly now become famous on Facebook by posting the following message:  full story

The online hoax phenomenon and how to address it

29.6.2016 8:05 Modern media and communications technology are connecting people across the global village, facilitating the dissemination and sharing of information without any of the
previous obstacles posed by space and time. The demand for open communications and the concurrent flood of information, however, increasingly require us to be able to
think critically and verify the information we receive.  full story

Czech mayor rejects ombudsperson's proposal on how to end discrimination of Romani children in local school

28.6.2016 19:19 The Czech Public Defender of Rights (ombudsperson), Anna Šabatová, considers discriminatory the approach taken by Ivana Preyová, the principal of the primary school in the town of Krásná Lípa who divided up first-graders at the beginning of this school year to create a classroom comprised solely of Romani children. Šabatová has recommended the establisher of the school take several steps to prevent discrimination this fall and minimize the risk of anti-discrimination lawsuits being filed against them.  full story

František Kostlán: Brexit is unwelcome because the British are great. Let's not be vindictive.

28.6.2016 7:14 The main reason Brexit is unwelcome hasn't been said yet: The British are great - they are simply themselves, with their experienced, ingrained democracy and their bravery, dedication and humanity. In other words, they have all the things we lack.  full story

Petr Uhl: British Tories and the Czech ODS are two Trojan horses inside the EU

27.6.2016 14:47 The European Union should change. The form of that change, however, will now be the subject of much discussion, as there are very different ideas for it being proposed.  full story

Czech Labor and Social Affairs Minister meets with homeless people

27.6.2016 6:55 On 23 June an active group of homeless people from three Czech cities met in Prague with Czech Labor and Social Affairs Minister Michaela Marksová and a representative of the Regional Development Ministry, Housing Policy Department Director Jiří Klíma. Roughly 40 people gathered to discuss the planned law on social housing.  full story

Most Czech regions uninterested in subsidizing lunches for impoverished children, some because they would be Romani

26.6.2016 20:37 For some time the numbers of children living in families who are in material distress has been rising in the Czech Republic, including the numbers of families who cannot afford to sign their children up for lunch at school. Even though ministries, nonprofit organizations, and Regional Authorities are aiding such children financially, the available money is not reaching all who need it.  full story

Czech Republic: Extremists sentenced to almost 7 years in prison for arson attack

26.6.2016 16:18 Tomáš Kopecký and Michal Poláček, the men responsible for an arson attack on a residential hotel occupied by Romani people in the Czech town of Aš, will serve six years and nine months in prison. The High Court in Prague sentenced them on 22 June for racially-motivated attempted murder and reckless endangerment.  full story

Czech media analysis warns of pro-Kremlin websites: Dangerous propaganda and unfair reporting

25.6.2016 12:39 Pro-Kremlin websites in the Czech Republic, primarily the online tabloid Parlamentní listy, are exploiting sophisticated methods for manipulating public opinion that break all the rules of professional journalism. Those are the results of an analysis performed by political scientists at Masaryk University with the support of the European Values think tank.  full story

Czech President calls DSSS party neo-Nazis, they say he parrots them on issue of migrants

23.6.2016 7:00 Speaking at the commemorative ceremony marking the anniversary of the obliteration of the village of Lidice during the Second World War, Czech President Miloš Zeman
warned against neo-Nazism, saying that it is inconspicuously beginning to threaten Czech society. His remarks on 11 June marked the 74th anniversary of the annihilation of the village by Nazi soldiers and specifically mentioned the members of the Workers Social Justice Party (DSSS) in the Czech Republic and the ultra-right party led by Marian Kotleba in Slovakia, calling them both neo-Nazis.  full story

Czech-language internet users, Roma included, fall for debunked hoax about mass wedding of adults and children

22.6.2016 7:33 A long-debunked hoax about an alleged wedding between 450 little girls and adult men has been spreading online once more in the Czech Republic. This particular hoax was first spread in 2009.  full story

When words fall on stony soil and hearts harden in the face of injustice: On coercive sterilisation and social theatre

16.6.2016 11:14 In Czechoslovakia coercive sterilisation policies primarily targeted groups that were considered a threat to the public health of society. Romani women were among these targeted groups, and over a period of almost thirty years, hundreds of Romani women were either sterilised without their knowledge, or unduly pressured by doctors and social workers to ‘consent’ to sterilisation. It was a bitter and cruel historical twist that Czechoslovakia launched its eugenic program focused on limiting the reproductive capacities of its ‘problematic’ groups in the early 1970s, just when Sweden finally chose to abolish its coercive sterilisation policies. Sweden had the unsavoury distinction of being the first country to introduce eugenic laws in the 1930s, even before Nazi Germany or fascist Italy. Only in 1993 did Czech-Slovak authorities abolish such abusive state policies, but in the absence of any new comprehensive policy framework, the practice mushroomed and continued until early 2000.  full story

Czech broadcast regulator: Prima TV news creates a negative image of migration

14.6.2016 7:00 On 7 June the Council for Radio and Television Broadcasting (RRTV) in the Czech Republic issued its statement on the manipulation of news broadcasts alleged to have been done by the Prima television station (news server Romea.cz is publishing the statement below in full translation). Council chair Ivan Krejčí said that an analysis of the news reporting by Prima from 24 August to 13 September 2015 has revealed several contentious moments in specific broadcasts that indicate a tendency to create a negative media image of the issue of migration.  full story