Commentary

Commentary: "Are you baby-sitting all those children?"

Prague, 12.7.2014 23:42, (ROMANO VOĎI) My friend Petra causes a ruckus wherever she goes with her children. "Are you some kind of camp? Are you baby-sitting them for someone? Did you adopt them all?" total strangers unashamedly ask her on the street, in the shop, on the tram, even when she visits the emergency room.  full story

Czech Deputy Culture Minister on Prima TV's antigypsyism

Prague, 12.7.2014 0:18, (ROMEA) The Council for Radio and Television Broadcasting in the Czech Republic has included among its priorities for 2014 more consistent monitoring of the stereotyping of minorities in the media. The council is primarily monitoring compliance with the provision of the Act on the Operation of Radio and Television Broadcasting that bans broadcasters from confirming prejudicial stereotypes against ethnic, racial or religious minorities in the programs they broadcast.  full story

Response to adoptive mother's blog about Romea.cz article

Prague, 10.7.2014 20:42, (ROMEA) On Thursday, 3 July, news server Romea.cz published an article by Saša Uhlová entitled Adoption and foster care: "We had room at the table". That article, which was about foster care and the stories of those who decide to aid parentless children, touched on the book Year of the Rooster (Rok kohouta) by the author Tereza Boučková.  full story

Commentary: Racist drivel infests Czech online discussions of World Cup

Prague, 7.7.2014 20:45, (ROMEA) The World Cup in Brazil has become yet another pretext for the tasteless exhibitionism of Czech xenophobes. The online discussions posted beneath the articles published on our most-read news servers are being exploited to spread drivel about the superiority of the "white race" and to incite hatred of everyone who is different.  full story

Response from adoptive father Jiří Bouček to "Adoption and foster care: We had room at the table"

Prague, 7.7.2014 18:23, (ROMEA) News server Romea.cz publishes a response from Jiří Bouček to our article entitled "Adoption and foster care: We had room at the table" in full translation below:  full story

Commentary: Death in Czech town shows state of Romani empowerment

Prague, 25.6.2014 23:58, (ROMEA) The current story of Romani people in the Czech Republic is not just about court cases, hate marches, or problems related to discrimination. Beneath the surface, a process of empowerment is underway.  full story

Karel Holomek: "Positive discrimination" - nonsense or a total misunderstanding?

Brno, 25.6.2014 20:27, (ROMEA) The news that Czech Human Rights Minister Dienstbier intends to submit the 2020 Romani Integration Strategy to the Government has sparked horror in political circles across the political spectrum here, or at best has sparked a reaction of total rejection. This has happened on the basis of a suggestive question asked by the tabloid daily Parlamentní listy, namely, whether these politicians support the "positive discrimination" of Romani people?  full story

Commentary: Active, emancipated Roma by 2020 is goal of Czech strategy

Prague, 20.6.2014 17:12, (ROMEA) Government strategies are not usually the most attractive or readable of texts. As far as the position of Romani people is concerned, readers can find many government documents have been produced already, including the Strategy for the Fight against Social Exclusion or the Strategy for Social Inclusion.  full story

Violeta Naydenova: For Roma in France, Is Climate of Intolerance Fueling Violence?

Bucharest/Paris, 19.6.2014 0:45, (ROMEA) Somewhere in a hospital in Paris tonight, a Roma teenager lies in a coma fighting for his life. Accounts suggest that the boy, known to us only as Darius, was accused of burglary by residents of a poverty-stricken public housing development in Pierefitte-sur-Sienne; they subsequently abducted him, beat him into a coma in a basement, and dumped his body in a shopping trolley.  full story

Commentary: Pope Francis is right - Roma are often modern-day slaves

Prague, 18.6.2014 19:45, (ROMEA) Recently several famous figures or those enjoying a certain authority have been standing up for Romani people and human rights in general. For example, Madeleine Albright has been following the lack of respect for Romani people in the Czech Republic and elsewhere and has expressed how disturbing she finds it.  full story

Commentary: Slovakia's Fascist governor and racist beauty queen

Bánská Bystrica/Bratislava, 13.6.2014 20:31, (ROMEA) Racist calls for the isolation, deportation and even the shooting of Romani people, as well as fake reports of fabulously high amounts of welfare being drawn by them, are turning up in both public and virtual spaces in Slovakia more and more frequently. The center of this Fascist ideology, inciting a war by "decent citizens" on "social parasites", has become the Bánská Bystrica Region ever since the election of ultra-nationalist Marián Kotleba as governor there, but other parts of the country are not immune.  full story

Commentary: Deadline for adopting Czech social housing concept is unrealistic

Prague, 12.6.2014 1:48, (ROMEA) Three months have elapsed since the Czech Government approved its program declaration stating that social housing is a priority. We have heard from many government politicians that work is underway on the Social Housing Concept and how important it is.  full story

Commentary: When a memorial stinks

Prague, 9.5.2014 21:15, (ROMEA) The WWII-era suffering of Romani people was not spoken of in the Czech Republic for a very long time. The horrors of the concentration camps were primarily linked here with the Holocaust of Europe's Jews.  full story

Commentary: LGBT people of all races, unite!

Prague, 8.5.2014 21:02, (ROMEA) I have received an e-mail with a press release from the ARA ART association saying that more than 20 Romani men and women of minority sexual orientations gathered recently in Prague's National Minorities' House for a first-ever, historic seminar about Romani lesbians, gays, bisexuals and trans-gender persons (LGBT). In and of itself this is not shocking - it was bound to happen, although Romani people with minority sexual orientations have a harder time in life for several reasons.  full story

Commentary: The human rights of salesman Miloš Zeman

Prague, 8.5.2014 2:16, (ROMEA) One of the biggest sins of the pre-1989 regime was its conceptual confusion, its twisting of words to mean something other than what they originally stood for, and its emptying what was said of all meaning. The word "peace", for example, actually meant the Cold War, while the nickname of "People's Democracy" meant the dictatorship of the proletariat.  full story

Miroslav Kováč: GRRP is "unduly interfering in the internal affairs" of the Equal Opportunities Party

Prague, 7.5.2014 22:32, (ROMEA) Miroslav Kováč of the Equal Opportunities Party (Strana rovných příležitostí - SRP) believes the Committee of Romani Regional Representatives (Grémium romských regionálních představitelů - GRRP), which has challenged the party to find a new chair, is "dictatorially, unduly interfering in the internal affairs of a properly-registered political party". News server Romea.cz publishes his statement here in full translation:  full story

videoMiroslav Kováč: How do we stand up to neo-Nazism - with arms, or with diplomacy?

Prague, 2.5.2014 22:04, (ROMEA) Photos of yesterday's DSSS rally in Ústí nad Labem are being shared on Facebook. Among Romani people, the image that is resounding the most is one in which, after a conversation, the chair of the Equal Opportunities Party (SRP), Štefan Tišer, shakes hands with DSSS chair Tomáš Vandas.  full story

Commentary: Czech special educators fear the inevitable - inclusive education

Prague, 1.5.2014 0:09, (ROMEA) In the Czech Republic the Association of Special Educators (Asociace speciálních pedagogů - ASP) is cringing and their supporters are sounding the alarm as if they were in real distress. On 19 April, the regional edition of the daily Mf DNES published an interview with Václav Mrštík, director of a regional-level educational-psychological counseling center, entitled "Psychologist: The law is more Catholic than the Pope and does not take children into consideration" (Psycholog: Zákon je papežštější než papež. Vůbec nehledí na děti.)  full story

Commentary: Is Roma unemployment a cause or an effect?

Prague, 19.4.2014 0:24, (ROMEA) I find myself in complete agreement with representatives of the Czech Labor Office when it comes to the dead-end position of the Romani community here. They have said they consider Romani integration into society insufficient, and also that they fear further deterioration of the situation and the growth of right-wing extremism.  full story

videoJovanovic: This is a constant battle for self-definition and we are resolved to win it, as long as we live

Budapest, 10.4.2014 22:11, (ROMEA) Forty-three years ago, the founding fathers of April 8th, gave answers to fundamental questions every nation faces at a certain point. They knew that answers they gave will not be obligatory to anyone. They knew that the answers they gave will not be imposed on us by any governmental decrees, history classes, monuments, museums, memorials, or military parades. And they also knew that these answers must be given by Roma instead of being given by somebody else.  full story