Czech Republic

Czech Republic: Romani community lights candles to honor their Holocaust victims

Prague, 6.4.2013 19:29, (ROMEA) A total of 30 Romani individuals and representatives of Romani organizations met yesterday in the courtyard of Prague’s Lichtenstein Palace to light candles in memory of their Holocaust victims. The commemoration was attended by the Czech Foreign Minister and the Czech Government Human Rights Commissioner on the occasion of International Romani Day, which falls on 8 April.  full story

Czech trafficking in poverty: Residential hotel owners cashing in on state welfare

Ostrava, 4.4.2013 22:32, (ROMEA) Overpriced rents, poor hygienic conditions, families with children living in one small room, strange contracts, infectious diseases: This is life in the residential hotels for the impoverished in Ostrava as described by an analysis performed by the Life Together (Vzájemné soužití) association and publicized yesterday at a press conference by experts criticizing another recent analysis published by the Czech Regional Development Ministry (MMR). That MMR analysis has stated that "social residential hotels" could become one component of social housing in the Czech Republic.  full story

Czech Govt Agency for Social Inclusion and ROMEA to discuss media's portrayal of Roma with journalists

Prague, 4.4.2013 14:43, (ROMEA) The Czech Government Agency for Social Inclusion and the ROMEA civic association are holding a round table on the topic of "Portraying Romani people in the media" at the Journalists' Syndicate (Syndikátu novinářů, Pressroom, Senovážné náměstí 23, Praha 1) on 8 April 2013 from 11:00 - 13:00. This event is being held under the auspices of Czech Government Human Rights Commissioner Monika Šimůnková.  full story

Czech experts disagree with residential hotels as social housing

Prague, 3.4.2013 17:00, (ROMEA) A group of academics and representatives of organizations serving the needy disagrees with including residential hotels as a component of social housing and are criticizing a recent analysis recommending such an approach. The group is also asking for a law to be adopted to ensure "affordable, non-segregated, quality housing" for the poor, according to the initiative's coordinator, Štěpán Ripka, who spoke at a press conference today.  full story

Martin Šimáček: Czech Govt Agency for Social Inclusion has not and will not meet with ultra-right party

Prague, 2.4.2013 23:01, (ROMEA) In response to the press release from the Konexe civic association of 30 March 2013 (http://www.romea.cz/en/news/czech/czech-ngo-town-of-krupka-discussing-romani-integration-with-ultra-right-party-not-with-romani-residents) I would like to state that the Czech Government Agency for Social Inclusion has never met with representatives of the Workers' Social Justice Party (Dělnická strana sociální spravedlnost), is not meeting with them and will not meet with them in future. The main reasons are the following:  full story

Czech NGO: Town of Krupka discussing Romani integration with ultra-right party, not with Romani residents

Krupka, 2.4.2013 22:17, (ROMEA) The following is a press release from the Konexe NGO:  full story

Czech Republic: Ostrava ghetto residents want out, but not to residential hotels

Ostrava, 2.4.2013 17:28, (ROMEA) They have to heat with wood, they have no electricity, and they continue to draw their potable water from a single shared faucet. This is how the last residents remaining in building number 8 on the ghetto of Přednádraží street in Ostrava live now. Even though the residents have begun slowly repairing the building with the aid of money from various donors, most of those who spoke to the Czech Press Agency claim they would like to move out of the locality.  full story

Czech Republic: Romani crime prevention assistant now police officer

Sokolov, 1.4.2013 23:49, (ROMEA) The West Bohemian town of Sokolov is the first in the Czech Republic in which a crime prevention assistant has gone on to become a municipal patrolman. Patrik Bandy worked as a crime prevention assistant in Sokolov starting in May 2012 and performed his job so responsibly he was selected as an appropriate candidate for the municipal force.  full story

Events scheduled for International Romani Day - 8 April 2013

Czech Republic, 1.4.2013 16:38, (ROMEA) On Monday, 8 April 2013 Romani people worldwide will celebrate International Romani Day. They will commemorate the historic first World Congress of the International Romani Union, which took place near London in 1971, primarily thanks to the initiative of Grattan Puxon and Donald Kenrick of Great Britain, Matéo Maximoff representing French Romani people (the Manouche), Jarko Jovanović of the former Yugoslavia, and other Romani individuals and Romani studies scholars.  full story

Czech Republic: Vietnamese mafia could spoil bid for national minority status

Prague, 30.3.2013 21:32, (ROMEA) Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, who chairs the Czech Government Council on National Minorities, is planning to submit a proposal to the Government to grant ethnic Belarussians and Vietnamese national minority status. There are 12 officially recognized national minorities in the Czech Republic.  full story

Miroslav Brož: "Social housing" for Romani people will preserve the status quo

Prague, 30.3.2013 19:59, (ROMEA) For quite some time now an agitated discussion has been taking place among experts about so-called "social housing". Such housing should be accessible to people who cannot rent apartments on the open market and who would otherwise end up on the street.  full story

Czech permanent settlement law expired 15 years ago

Prague, 30.3.2013 19:27, (ROMEA) Deeply engrained stereotypes about Romani people, formed in Europe over the course of six centuries, persist today even though various regimes have made efforts to more or less eliminate the stereotypes in various ways. One of those efforts was the forced assimilation of Romani people that began in the fall of 1958 in the former Czechoslovakia with a law on the permanent settlement of vagrant persons.  full story

Czech town orders slumlord to remove tons of garbage from condemned building

Ústí nad Labem, Předlice, 28.3.2013 15:36, (ROMEA) News server iDNES.cz reports that the Ústí nad Labem town hall has ordered the removal of tons of garbage from a building in the Předlice quarter. The sad state of the structure was recently pointed out to them by the Konexe association, which helps impoverished Romani people in Ústí nad Labem.  full story

Czech NGO: Dense network of gaming rooms is drowning the poor

Ústí nad Labem, 28.3.2013 0:44, (ROMEA) Staff of the People in Need (Člověk v tísni) organization have mapped the situation concerning the operation of gaming rooms in the Czech town of Ústí nad Labem. More than 100 places there feature video poker machines through which roughly half a billion crowns flow annually.  full story

Czech Museum of Roma Culture could merge with another, community is against it

Brno/Prague, 27.3.2013 16:36, (ROMEA) The Museum of Roma Culture is threatened with the prospect of being merged with the Moravian Museum in Brno on the basis of the first phase of saving measures approved by the Czech Government at its meeting on 16 January 2013. At its most recent session this past Monday, the Inter-ministerial Commission on Roma Community Affairs has expressed its disagreement with this plan.  full story

Commentary: Czech antigypsyism, or, a report on the state of the country

Prague, 26.3.2013 23:57, (ROMEA) I have been systematically reporting on the lives of people living in ghettos, the activity of the ultra-right, and the state of the media with respect to the topic of Romani people, including analysis and criticism. My experiences in doing this work, or rather the topics I have been involved with during it, are alarming.  full story

videoCzech court upholds acquittal, light sentence for assailants of human rights monitor

Most, 26.3.2013 1:04, (ROMEA) An appeals court has once again reviewed the November 2008 assault of activist Ondřej Cakl during a neo-Nazi demonstration at the Janov housing estate in Litvínov. The court did not accept Cakl's reasoning and has upheld the sentence handed down against one of the assailants by the first-instance court. The appeals court also upheld the acquittal of a second alleged assailant  full story

German court convicts kidnappers of infant from Czech Republic

Koblenz, Germany, 25.3.2013 16:53, (ROMEA) The state court in the German town of Koblenz has sentenced the two kidnappers of a newborn girl from the town of Trmice in the Ústí Region of the Czech Republic to four and a half years in prison. The verdict has yet to take effect.  full story

videoCzech cops edited footage of brutal intervention against Romani woman for media

Prague, 25.3.2013 1:04, (ROMEA) TV Nova, the Czech Republic's most-watched private television channel, has managed to acquire video footage of a controversial intervention by municipal police in the town of Rokycany during which a pram with an infant in it was overturned on the street. The 16-month-old boy escaped serious injury through sheer luck.  full story

Czech Helsinki Committee publishes shadow report on discrimination and racism

Prague, 23.3.2013 19:44, (ROMEA) On the occasion of the International Day against Racism, the Czech Helsinki Committee (Český helsinský výbor - ČHV) has published a shadow report on racism in the Czech Republic and in Europe. The report is issued annually by the European Network against Racism (ENAR), an umbrella organization of hundreds of human rights groups from 26 countries.This most recent report maps the situation during 2011 and part of 2012. The English-language summary report, "Racism in Europe", is available here: http://www.romea.cz/dokumenty/SR_EU-2012.pdf  full story