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Czech PM: Hate attacks in UK after Brexit are future of Europe if EU falls

10.10.2016 9:25 On Friday, 7 October, Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka (Czech Social Democratic Party - ČSSD) said the British decision to leave the European Union has led to foreign nationals becoming targeted for assault in Britain. He believes a similar error must not be repeated in any other EU country, otherwise Europe will be smashed by its own hatreds and nationalism.  full story

Romani heroes: The "Black" Partisan, Josef Serinek

10.10.2016 8:23 Josef Serinek (1900-1974, sometimes also spelled Serynek), a Czech Roma who went by the code name of Černý ("Black"), was a soldier during the First World War, a prisoner of the Lety concentration camp during the Second World War, and later a Partisan commander. After the end of the Second World War he ran a pub called "U černého partyzána" ("At the Black Partisan's Place") in the Czech town of Svitavy.
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EUROPE: Roma Pride 2016 raised the issue of denying that Roma were Holocaust victims

10.10.2016 7:36 On Sunday, 2 October, the sixth annual Roma Pride event took place in a number of locations around Europe including Prague. Compared to previous years, there was significantly lower Romani turnout for it in Prague this year.  full story

Czech party revives anti-Romani slogan - "Gadje, get to work" - in Ústecký Region, and wins

9.10.2016 20:12 The Civic Democratic Party (ODS) in Ústecký Region has revived a racist slogan from 2008 and struck an anti-Romani note in the run-up to this weekend's elections. The video clip published on the official Facebook page of the party begins with the sentence "Hey, gadje, why do you have time to sit down? Get to work so we'll have enough money for welfare!"  full story

Commentary: In a country with almost no refugees, why are they feared?

9.10.2016 19:32 "In two towns in the east of Germany on Friday evening small groups of local residents clashed with asylum-seekers. The scuffles resulted in four people suffering slight injuries," the Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported on Saturday, 1 October.  full story

Commentary: Czechs realize "anti-Gypsy" law - stricter than during totalitarian rule - applies to them too

9.10.2016 18:20 As of 1 October an amendment to the law on misdemeanors has taken effect in the Czech Republic. Each municipality will now have to publish a decree listing the kind of behavior that qualifies as disrupting nighttime quiet.  full story

Commentary: Monothematic parties lose, but carefully-expressed bigotry wins votes in the Czech Republic

9.10.2016 17:11 Of the anti-Romani or extremist-oriented parties that ran during the regional and Senate elections this weekend, the Freedom and Direct Democracy group (Svoboda a přímá demokracie - SPD), founded by Tomio Okamura, scored the biggest success, mostly by running in coalition with the Citizens' Rights Party (SPO), which is connected to Czech President Zeman. Bigoted candidates such as Jaroslav Doubrava and Liana Janáčková made it to the second round of the Senate elections, and Jiří Čunek, running for the Christian Democrats (KDU-ČSL) scored a significant success in the Zlín Region.  full story

Commentary: Czech Regional and Senate elections - Roma didn't vote, Romani candidates didn't win

9.10.2016 14:15 The outcome of this weekend's elections to regional assemblies and to one-third of the Czech Senate in localities where a greater number of Romani people live did not demonstrate any significant voter preferences - rather, what was typical of those localities was a very low voter turnout. Romani candidates were not elected anywhere.  full story

Czech journalist Petr Uhl celebrates his 75th birthday: Always room for improvement on human rights

8.10.2016 20:57 The journalist, former dissident, signatory of Charter 77, former General Director of the Czech News Agency and the Czech Republic's first-ever Human Rights Commissioner, Petr Uhl, is celebrating his 75th birthday today, 8 October. The former commentator for the Czech daily Právo has also been a member of the board of public broadcaster Czech Television and of the Czech Government Human Rights Council.  full story

Analysis: Why the National Resistance members should be tried - 10 years of a failed hunt for hardcore neo-Nazis in the Czech Republic

8.10.2016 12:20 Two weeks ago, the latest round of the court proceedings against eight defendants charged with conspiracy and rioting with the aim of promoting Nazism in the Czech Republic began. According to the indictment, the defendants are the former hard core of an unregistered group called the "National Resistance" (Národní odpor - NO).  full story

Czech regional elections. Romani candidate for LEV21, Miroslav Jano: I don't like combining with the ultra-right, after this I'm out

8.10.2016 10:09 On Friday, 7 October and Saturday, 8 October, citizens of the Czech Republic will vote for regional assembly members and in some regions also for the one-third of the Czech Senate whose electoral terms are expiring. Political parties have also sent several candidates to the regional elections who are of Romani nationality.  full story

Czech Republic: Four concentration camps for Roma ran during WWII in Liberec - Part Three

8.10.2016 8:58 This is the final piece in our three-part series about the concentration camps for Romani people in Liberec that ran from 1939 until 1943 when the country was the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The series is based on articles by Ivan Rous in the books "Camps and Wartime Production" ("Tábory a válečná výroba") and "Blank Spaces in Holocaust Research" ("Bílá místa ve výzkumu holokaustu").  full story

Czech regional elections. Romani SocDem candidate Rudolf Polák: Pay must motivate semi-skilled laborers too

7.10.2016 20:52 On Friday, 7 October and Saturday, 8 October, citizens of the Czech Republic will vote for regional councilors and in some regions also for the one-third of the Czech Senate whose electoral terms are expiring. Political parties have also sent several candidates to the regional elections who are of Romani nationality.  full story

Czech Republic: Four concentration camps for Roma ran during WWII in Liberec - Part Two

7.10.2016 17:46 This is the second piece in our three-part series about the concentration camps for Romani people in Liberec that ran from 1939 until 1943 when the country was the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The series is based on articles by Ivan Rous in the books "Camps and Wartime Production" ("Tábory a válečná výroba") and "Blank Spaces in Holocaust Research" ("Bílá místa ve výzkumu holokaustu").  full story

Romani journalist from Macedonia raises forced marriage at the OSCE

7.10.2016 14:20 Sunai Sabrioski is a Romani journalist from Macedonia who recently the attended the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting of the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Warsaw, where civil society members usually get three minutes (or less) during the plenary sessions to make recommendations to the delegations of the 57 Participating states. News server Romea.cz conducted the following interview with him.  full story

Czech regional elections. Romani candidate for the Greens/Pirates, Karel Karika: No more socially excluded localities

7.10.2016 13:18 On Friday, 7 October and Saturday, 8 October, citizens of the Czech Republic will vote for regional councilors and in some regions also for the one-third of the Czech Senate whose electoral terms are expiring. Political parties have also sent several candidates to the regional elections who are of Romani nationality.  full story

Czech regional elections: Romani ODS candidate Milan Horvát says small-town schools need good educators

6.10.2016 18:02 On Friday, 7 October and Saturday, 8 October, citizens of the Czech Republic will vote for regional councilors and in some regions also for the one-third of the Czech Senate whose electoral terms are expiring. Political parties have also sent several candidates to the regional elections who are of Romani nationality.  full story

Czech children's sports team called "Cyklon B" played a Romani team last weekend, organizers apologize

6.10.2016 16:14 The first Saturday of October in the Ládví neighborhood of Prague saw a sports tournament held for children living in state-run children's homes. Second place in the category of children aged 13 and older went to a team from the Dolní Počernice Children's Home who called themselves "Cyklon B", the Czech translation of Zyklon B, the brand name of a cyanide-based pesticide invented in Germany in the early 1920s and infamous for its use by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust to murder approximately one million people in gas chambers installed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, and other extermination camps.  full story

Romani Rose tells German Chancellor his parents, who survived the Holocaust, would have approved of her

6.10.2016 14:51 At the end of September the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, with the support of various foundations and the German Government, celebrated the 70th birthday of its longtime president, Romani Rose, in Berlin. German Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Union gave a speech during the celebration, and Rose also received congratulations in person from Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (Die Linke) of the state of Thuringia, MP Claudia Roth (Greens), who is the vice-chair of the Bundestag, and Hartmut Koschik of the Christian Socialist Union, the Government's rapporteur for national minorities.  full story

Czech regional elections: Roma Democratic Party says job opportunities needed

6.10.2016 11:36 On Friday, 7 October and Saturday, 8 October, citizens of the Czech Republic will vote for regional councilors and in some regions also for the one-third of the Czech Senate whose electoral terms are expiring. Political parties have also sent several candidates to the regional elections who are of Romani nationality.  full story