Commentary

Yaron Matras: Do Roma need protection from themselves? The Council of Europe comes under fire from academics for reinforcing prejudice

24.3.2016 23:43 Almost one hundred academic researchers specialising in Romani studies have signed an open letter to the Council of Europe’s Secretary General, Thorbjørn Jagland, expressing their concern about a recent Council of Europe communication announcing its new four-year Thematic Action Plan on Roma and Traveller Inclusion. They take issue with the statement’s depiction of Roma as having a pre-disposition to early marriage, violence, organised crime and begging, and say that such suggestions contribute to, rather than confront stigmatisation and prejudice.  full story

Yveta Kenety: Czech daily again manipulates public with biased, outdated information about Roma

24.3.2016 17:14 One of the most recent examples of manipulative journalism that breaks all the rules on writing a quality article is the Právo daily's piece published on 21 March on their online news server Novinky.cz with the misleading headline "European Judges: Czech Republic was basically punished for trying to educate Roma". The report is about the European Court of Human Rights judgment in the case of D.H. and Others versus Czech Republic and quotes three judges who voted against that judgment as if it were a hot news item the journalist had to go straight to Strasbourg to get.  full story

David Beňák on the Czech inclusive education debate, the invisible, and the unheard

23.3.2016 21:27 Educating all children together is a basic, normal approach to education that must be the standard in the Czech Republic. It is a good standard to set ourselves.  full story

Editorial: Czech Senator publishes untruths in defense of segregated school

10.3.2016 16:24 At the close of February, the Czech School Inspection (Česká školní inspekce - ČŠI) published its inspection report from its monitoring of the Primary School in the town of Krásná Lípa. In September 2015, Romani parents there had complained that their children had been concentrated into a single class.  full story

Czech Green Party chair describes hateful verbal assault on Prague public transport

5.3.2016 21:34 It's happened to me twice now, within a very short amount of time. I get on the tram, take a seat, and suddenly behind me, from the rear platform, someone starts yelling this to the whole tram car: "That's the creep who's inviting Muslims to our country to rape our Czech women, I'm telling everybody here, that's Matěj Stropnický, look at him" (the whole tram turns to look and a couple of people laugh at me) "the shame of our nation! What are you doing, you motherfucker? You wanna take me? Come on, get out, let's go!" (by now the tram is absolutely silent and, what's more, we're in a traffic jam).  full story

Drahomír Radek Horváth: Romani children in the Czech Republic end up in "special schools" but thrive abroad. Why?

3.3.2016 18:45 I would like to permit myself the luxury here of describing something bluntly and straightforwardly, without beating around the bush. More than 30 % of the children being educated according to the program for the "mildly mentally disabled" (lehce mentálně postižené - LMP) in the Czech Republic are Romani.  full story

Patrik Banga: Inclusion? Definitely yes!

1.3.2016 19:43 Beginning with the new school year this fall, a decree on inclusive education will take effect in the Czech Republic. The nation, as is traditional, is screaming that "this is a law for Gypsies", while teachers are screaming that the schools will be degraded.  full story

Jan Kudry: Let's not punish Romani children for their parents' errors

29.2.2016 23:18 Jan Kudry is from Postoloprty, Czech Republic. Last year he defended his dissertation at Charles University's Faculty of Pedagogy. He works as an investigator for the Criminal Police and Detective Services in the town of Beroun and is an external instructor at Svatojanská College in the town of Svatý Jan pod Skalou. He is also a member of the Czech Government Inter-ministerial Commission on Roma Community Affairs.  full story

Editorial: Czech media claim inspection found "no discrimination" at Krásná Lípa school - lack of professionalism or intentional manipulation?

26.2.2016 17:04 The Czech School Inspection (Česká školní inspekce - ČSI) has published a report of its investigation into a primary school in the town of Krásná Lípa where Romani parents complained last September that their children had been concentrated into a single classroom. The conclusions of the report are unambiguous and very unfavorable to the school.  full story

Mensur Haliti on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day: A Way Forward from “Never Again”

27.1.2016 10:26, (ROMEA) January 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day Today, humanity will pay tribute to the millions of people who were murdered in Europe under the Nazi regime.

Commemorations are necessary to understand the demons of human nature and to make us realize what we are “capable of”, and how “good people” can sometimes contribute to mass murders, surrendering their morals to the group in power.  full story

Separate, Unequal and Hazardous: The essential guide to Roma housing in Slovakia

22.1.2016 11:14 The Slovak Anti-Poverty Network argues that “housing and the protection of the right to housing is the weakest component of public policies”.1 There is a shortage of affordable accommodation; despite the growing number of applicants for social housing, public authorities rarely build new flats, and the number of flats available for rent is low and falls way short of the demand. Programs promoting social mix (more affluent social classes living with the poorer) are entirely missing.  full story

Attila Balogh Hidvégi on serial murders in Hungary: Even brutal crimes did not spark Romani solidarity

19.1.2016 21:10 In connection with the recent verdict of the Hungarian Supreme Court upholding life sentences for three perpetrators of the serial murders of Romani people in Hungary and a 13-year sentence for their accomplice, news server Romea.cz is presenting in translation the following commentary by Romani journalist Attila Balogh Hidvégi who, according to his account, has followed this scandal intensively from the beginning and is completely, thoroughly familiar not just with the text of the indictment, but also with the events that occurred between the various hearings in the case. Hidvégi published his commentary on www.romnet.hu and we are reprinting it in translation here in a shortened form with their kind permission:  full story

Commentary by Karel Holomek: Special educators' lobby has tried to convince us for years that inclusion can't happen yet

12.1.2016 8:00 Among some of our educators the conviction predominates that inclusive education would be equivalent to the Czech schools planning to commit suicide. This has already become a kind of obsession, and some members of the special educators' lobby have been doing their best to convince us for at least 15 years that the time has not yet come for children with varying degrees of mental backwardness (mainly social backwardness) - or even for some children without any such backwardness - to be included in mainstream education.  full story

Commentary by Petr Uhl: "The Jew Hilsner from Polná was unjustly convicted of the murder of the Christian, Hrůzová"

7.1.2016 23:03 I have borrowed the headline for this commentary from yesterday's news reports published by several Czech media outlets. The full headline was: "Leopold Hilsner, a resident of the Jewish ghetto in Polná, was unjustly convicted of the murder of the Christian, Hrůzová."  full story

Commentary: Is Czech society about to rid itself of anti-Gypsyist MEP Miloslav Ransdorf?

10.12.2015 4:32 I have known Miloslav Ransdorf since June 1990, when we were both elected as legislators in the Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia - he for the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, I for Civic Forum (Občanské fórum). We did not see eye to eye there despite my cooperation with most of his comrades in that parliament.  full story

Karel Holomek: Do Roma fall into poverty from the same causes and in the same way as everyone else?

2.12.2015 19:43 In the Czech Government's regular annual report on the state of the Romani minority, the most essential message is that as many as 115 000 people today are living in impoverished ghettos and that this number, compared to 2006, has almost doubled from the 60 000 people so afflicted then, and that currently there are as many as 600 such ghettos (excluded localities) compared to an estimated 300 then. It is also casually mentioned, along with this number, that most of these people are Romani, because, after all, this is a report on the status of the Romani minority, not just a report on the state of poverty in general.  full story

Drahomír Radek Horváth: Criticizing the Pope's reception of Romani people is disgraceful

30.11.2015 4:27 On 26 October 2015 Pope Francis met with several thousand Roma and Sinti. "The aim of this event is to remind Romani people and the entire community that the Church is open to those who live on the outskirts of society," the Vatican communicated ahead of the meeting.  full story

Commentary: Jewish representative in Germany expresses the racist view that hatred is an "ethnic problem" of Arabs

23.11.2015 19:24 According to the Czech News Agency, the chair of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, has expressed himself as being in favor of establishing a maximum number of refugees that the country can accept. Schuster said he sees the problem of the current migration wave as consisting, among other things, of the fact that the refugees "are coming from cultures wherein hatred toward Jews and intolerance are a fixed component".  full story

Commentary: Martin Konvička, the crime of preparing apartheid and the segregation of Romani children

22.11.2015 13:23 It occurred to one journalist to ask a police spokesperson whether the Police of the Czech Republic are undertaking an investigation or proceedings concerning incitement to hatred of religion in connection with the group called "We Don't Want Islam in the Czech Republic". Its representative, Martin Konvička, was seconded on Tuesday, 17 November, by the President of the Republic, Miloš Zeman - alongside representatives of the ultra-right "Dawn" (Úsvit) and the Citizens' Rights Party (SPO) - at a demonstration at Albertov in Prague.  full story

Commentary: You have the floor, so babble and manipulate people

21.11.2015 14:02 News server Romea.cz is republishing in full translation the following commentary by Bob Kartous from the EDUin NGO, written after he participated in the episode broadcast on 9 November of the Czech Television talk show "You Have the Floor" (Máte slovo) as a guest. The topic of the program was inclusion in the schools.  full story