News

VIDEO: Romani students spend the weekend in Brno's Cejl neighborhood

21.3.2017 9:33 A video has been produced of the Baruvas meeting of Romani college and high school students to show what the atmosphere and course of such a meeting is like. Romani college student Tereza Heková, who attended the meeting, contributed to filming the footage and to its postproduction processing.  full story

Slovak neo-Nazi and MP Milan Mazurek prosecuted for racist remarks about Roma

21.3.2017 7:10 Slovak media report that police officers from the National Criminal Agency (NAKA) in Slovakia have begun criminal proceedings against Slovak MP Milan Mazurek (Kotleba-ĽSNS) over his abusive remarks about Romani people made during an interview with the Frontinus radio station in Žilina. Mazurek is accused of making generalizing remarks about all Romani people which the moderator also did nothing to correct.  full story

Czech artist's guide to Brno neighborhood nominated for award, Romani activists are not happy

20.3.2017 21:02 A guidebook to the neighborhood in Brno colloquially referred to as the "Bronx" that has been published by artist Kateřina Šedá, has been previously reviewed by news server Romea.cz. The book,"Brnox", has now been nominated for the Magnesia Litera award in the category of "Journalism".  full story

Czech Senator embarrassingly falls for satire claiming EU wants to change the Czech alphabet

20.3.2017 7:20 We have written several times here at Romea.cz about Czech Senator Jaroslav Doubrava. Mostly we have reported his anti-Romani, racist remarks, or his attacks against the European Union (EU).  full story

Czech protest march over flamingo killing cancelled, meeting with local officials to be held instead

19.3.2017 8:40 The march through the Czech town of Jihlava that was supposed to take place in response to young Romani children stoning a flamingo to death in the zoo there will not take place after all. Organizers ultimately canceled it out of concern that it would become a platform for racist and xenophobic speech.  full story

Interview with Romani activist Veronika Kmetzová of Předlice in the Czech Republic

18.3.2017 9:47 Veronika Kmetzová (age 29) is a Romani activist who, in collaboration with other partners, has established an association, Amare Předlice, which has tasked itself with aiding the improvement of the lives and social situations of the inhabitants of the Předlice neighborhood of Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic. In its manifesto, the group says one of its aims is to "focus on improving public spaces in Předlice and on work with the local community to involve them in finding solutions".  full story

Jana Šedivcová: Are all Czech children cat killers and all Romani children flamingo killers? Collective blame is unacceptable

17.3.2017 15:03 When I heard the news that children had killed one rare flamingo and seriously harmed another at the zoo in Jihlava, it made me dizzy. I felt the same when, the next day, a video appeared "on the net" of other children in another town who almost killed a cat by hanging it.  full story

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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Karin Marques: A visit to the Romani children in the Slovak schools

17.3.2017 7:14 Karin Marques, a specialist in inclusive education with the Open Society Fund Prague, has published on the website of the foundation her impressions from a study trip to Slovakia organized by the League of Community Schools (Liga komunitních škol), which is involved in community education and inclusive education. News server Romea.cz publishes it here in full translation:  full story

Gwendolyn Albert: Is impunity ending for ethnic discrimination in the Czech schools?

16.3.2017 16:59

The judgment earlier this month finding that a primary school discriminated against Romani enrollees into first grade on the basis of their ethnicity stands out as an example of children and their parents asserting their right to education in the Czech Republic. Should the school appeal, and should the first-instance judgment withstand higher court scrutiny, we might be able to say that a first blow has been dealt by the Czech courts to the impunity for ethnic discrimination in the schools that has persisted here for decades.

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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