The 20th annual World Roma Festival KHAMORO is upon us and the launch party on Prague's Střelecký ostrov will happen Sunday evening. The Milan Kroka live band,
Gipsy.cz, and the Slovak singer Gitana will perform.

A delegation from the controversial "Freedom and Direct Democracy" (SPD) movement; the controversial chair of the Czech Freedom Fighters' Union, Jaroslav Vodička, again invited to speak; the homophobic Czech MP Jaroslav Foldyna seated on the main tribunal; no Jewish rabbis in attendance; no Romani flag flying - this was what the Terezín Commemoration looked like on Sunday. The Konexe organization considers this year's ceremony to have been a desecration of the site and will be demanding the dismissal of the director of the Terezín Memorial.

The Divadlo Petra Bezruče theater in Ostrava, Czech Republic has premiered an original production entitled #nejsemrasista_ale ("#I'm not a racist, but..."), directed by Braňo Holiček. The play about anonymous opinions on the Internet that frequently mask emotions of fear and hatred premiered on 18 May.

According to the Ukrainian ombudsman, on 22 May approximately 12 assailants set a Romani camp on fire in the Ternopil region of western Ukraine. At the moment of the attack there were seven adults and more than 30 young Romani children at the camp.

ROMEA o.p.s. in collaboration with the Prague Forum for Romani Histories at the Czech Academy of Sciences‘ Institute for Contemporary History, the Museum of Romani Culture (MRC) and the Romani Studies Seminar at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University has just held the third in their series of public debates on the occasion of the state buying out the pig farm facility in Lety u Písku because of its location on a genocide site. The panel discussion, "Holocaust of the Roma: Contemporary Research in Czechoslovak Context" was attended by almost 60 people and took place in the unique venue that is Kampus Hybernská, a joint project of the City of Prague and the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague.

Court testimony by another eyewitness to the 2016 shooting incident at a summer camp continued yesterday at the District Court in Děčín. Martin Kout is accused of having fired a gun and racially abused those attending a children's camp in 2016.

The current situation in the United States of America is being debated today in Prague by Steve Bannon, a former strategic adviser to US President Donald Trump, with another former special adviser to a different White House, Lanny Davis, who is a member of the Democratic Party. Bannon is considered a controversial figure - prior to his White House work he led the extremist, xenophobic news website Breitbart.com, which was known at that time for its significantly anti-immigrant, nationalist rhetoric.