Commentary

Miroslav Kováč: Longtime racist politician hands out matches during Czech elections

26.9.2016 12:49 Liana Janáčková is a former Senator and longtime Mayor of the Municipal Department of Mariánské Hory in the City of Ostrava who is primarily infamous for her blatantly extremist position toward the Romani minority, and she is running for the Senate again this year. This time around she is running for the INDEPENDENTS (NEZÁVISLÍ) movement in the Ostrava-město precinct, while at the same time, in the elections to the Regional Authority, she is heading the candidate list for that movement in the Moravian-Silesian Region.  full story

Commentary: A children's playground, common dialogue, and the media

25.9.2016 20:54 In mid-September the Lidové noviny daily paper opened up an important topic by publishing a sketch of an everyday experience at a children's playground in the Czech Republic. What followed was a passionate discussion about whether the article itself was inciting racism or whether it was analyzing the causes of racism, whether a person should "speak up" in certain situations or leave them in tears.  full story

Commentary: The Miss Roma competition does more harm than good

25.9.2016 18:29 On Saturday evening the "Miss Roma 2016" competition was held at the House of Culture in the Czech town of Hodonín for the 12th year in a row. I have always had mixed feelings about this contest, but I have never before publicly discussed what bothers me about it because it was always clear to me that it involves a significant emancipatory charge for some Romani community members.  full story

Eva Danišová: Czech society has already crossed the line between intolerance and racism

21.9.2016 18:48 On 16 September 2016, the Office of the Czech Government Council for Romani Minority Affairs and the Secretariat of the Czech Government Council on National Minorities held a training on the principles of community work and development of the skills necessary for negotiating with local governments. The training was attended by Romani representatives who negotiate with the local authorities in the places where they work and also in the socially excluded localities in which they move.  full story

Commentary: Czech "hero" reports the racist news from a children's playground

20.9.2016 8:00 The Czech media panopticum has offered consumers a lot recently: Olivie Žižková and her man filming themselves during attacks of paranoia on mass transit in Prague, the "schizophrenic Barbie" running for office with her untreated Messiah complex - and now there's another. An editor at the newspaper Lidové Noviny, Přemysl Houda, has written a column called "Playground Racism" in which he laments an episode he recently experienced between the playground slides.  full story

Commentary: Schizophrenic "Barbie" running for ultra-right party claims to be shocked by backlash against her support for Romani arson victim

18.9.2016 8:20 The Czech celebrity Dominika Myslivcová is "Barbie". At least, that's the nickname given to her by the readers of Czech tabloids.  full story

Miroslav Klempár: Parents make the final decision on where to enroll their children for school

17.9.2016 13:24 In the former communist Czechoslovakia of the late 1950s, the Government decided that Romani people were different from the rest of society and should therefore be educated separately. This differentiation on the basis of race led to today's two-track school system, in which a high-quality education is offered by mainstream schools where mostly non-Romani children are educated, and Romani children are disproportionately represented in what were once called the "zvláštní školy" (special schools) where a reduced education is offered for children who have mild mental disability.  full story

Commentary: An oasis of green and white has been flooded with Brownshirt mud

14.9.2016 15:27 The Bohemians Praha 1905 football club, based in the Vršovice quarter of Prague, is wearing a coat of shame today. Actually, we all are.  full story

Commentary: The pigs at Lety and Babiš shooting himself in the foot

8.9.2016 14:04 From 2007-2009 I served as Czech Education Minister, and together with [Human Rights Minister] Michael Kocáb we attempted, among other things, to advocate for the removal of the pig farm from the site at Lety u Písku. We were not concerned with just that location, but also with the site at Hodonín u Kunštátu, where a similar camp ran during the war, one that is remembered even less than Lety is.  full story

Karel Holomek: Merkel vs. Putin? Outrageous

2.9.2016 7:30 I frequently marvel at the values that are apparently held by a rather large number of people in the Czech Republic who make clear their hatreds and low instincts by protesting against God only knows whom (or why). I was most recently convinced of what those values are during German Chancellor Merkel's visit here.  full story

Renata Berkyová: Gays, hands off the Romani flag!

19.8.2016 17:09 What some Romani people are posting on social networks these days about the topic of sexual orientation has prompted me to respond. The springboard for these heated
debates is the fact that Prague Pride, the parade celebrating people of various sexual orientations, included Romani people this year who proudly raised the Roma flag.  full story

Commentary: Czech Social Democrats compete with ultra-right to see who can be more racist and xenophobic

19.8.2016 8:24 Czech MP Stanislav Huml of the Social Democrats, who is infamous for his extreme positions against Islam or refugees, as well as for his conspiracy theories about 9/11, recently published a video on his Facebook profile denying the Holocaust. He called it "brutal, [politically] incorrect, but inspiring".  full story

Commentary: Merkel, refugees, no to terrorism, Echo24 "mooing", Putin has already won

12.8.2016 17:24 This commentary reflects on selected events from this past week in the media. Commentator František Kostlán gives us his take on the news.  full story

Czech celebrity's music video against Islam earns ridicule, but at what cost?

12.8.2016 8:00 Erik Tabery, Editor-in-Chief of the Czech weekly RESPEKT, has commented on the phenomenon of celebrity Olivie Žižková and her music video against Islam, "Europe, Start Breathing" (Evropo dýchej). "We all love videos of people we can laugh at because they are a unique opportunity to feel better. The singer Olivie Žižková and her song 'Evropo dýchej' offer many reasons to feel better in this regard, but it's not really a laughing matter, for several reasons," Tabery writes for news server Respect.cz after Žižková was interviewed by journalist Daniela Drtinová of the DVTV channel.  full story

Commentary: Czech tabloid misinforms public that Romani children in Varnsdorf "don't go to school"

11.8.2016 18:59 After watching a recently televised interview between the journalist Daniela Drtinová and anthropologist Radka Vepřková about the situation in the Czech town of Varnsdorf, I was curious to see what the tabloid news server Parlamentní listy (PL) was publishing about it - and what I found was no surprise. PL once again has produced its own particular interpretation of what was said, this time cherry-picking from the anthropologist's answers and also directly misquoting her.  full story

Commentary: Czech broadcast regulator begins proceedings against TV Prima over report about Klinika social center

8.8.2016 9:40 In addition to its other manipulative reporting about refugees and Romani people, the Prima television channel in the Czech Republic broadcast a manipulative news report this spring about the Klinika Autonomous Social Center in Prague, which provides aid to refugees and the socially vulnerable. The Czech Council for Radio and Television Broadcasting (RRTV) has now issued a press release announcing that it has begun an administrative proceedings with the station over its reportage about Klinika broadcast on 28 May 2016 in its News program.  full story

Commentary: How to demolish the pig farm at Lety?

5.8.2016 18:48 "Lety is a problem the resolution of which can naturally be postponed indefinitely. It is not known how much it will cost for the clean-up operation - and over the years that amount has loosely ranged from between roughly CZK 70 million (EUR 2.59 million) to a virtual billion crowns (EUR 37 million) - but it is certain that basically it will never be possible to properly 'calculate' it or compare it to anything that might placed on the table as a counter-argument that 'it would be better to spend that on XYZ' ", writes Czech journalist Jindřich Šídlo on news server iHNED.cz in response to remarks by Czech Culture Minister Daniel Herman about resolving the problem of the industrial pig farm on the site of the former concentration camp for Romani people at Lety by Písek.  full story

Commentary: Czech TV Prima broadcasts manipulative report about Roma returning from Britain en masse

3.8.2016 20:00 The Prima television station in the Czech Republic must have some sort of "anti-ethics code" obligating it to constantly incite the public against minorities. Previously, for example, it was revealed that its news editors were instructed by their superiors to report about refugees in exclusively negative terms.    

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Emílie Žigová: Czech ethnologist's rhetoric reminiscent of the Nazi era

23.7.2016 17:04 I recently read an article by ethnologist Mnislav Zelený-Atapany in the Lidové noviny daily called "Is a genocide against whites next for Europe?" (Je na řadě genocida bělochů v Evropě?). The peice opens by attempting to describe the feelings of an ordinary person who is both afraid and angry that politicians are not telling people the truth and that the danger posed by terrorist attacks is growing here.  full story

Commentary: Integration of impoverished Roma must begin immediately in the Czech Republic

18.7.2016 8:17 Czech Culture Minister Daniel Herman has said good-faith, intensive negotiations are underway with stockholders to remove the pig farm from the site of the former concentration camp at Lety where Romani people died. Czech Human Rights Minister Jiří Dienstbier has said he believes a law on social housing can still be approved before the next elections.  full story