Ondřej Mrázek

The bells in Ukraine are tolling for the Roma

13.9.2018 10:30 Bloody pogroms and systematic human rights violations committed by members of state-tolerated extremist organizations against Romani encampments have sparked an exceptionally strong reaction recently from international institutions and politicians. These figures are calling on Kyiv to make these racist groups illegal and to take strong action against them.  full story

Ukraine: Non-Romani politician charged with shooting one Romani man dead during pogrom and wounding four others

6.6.2017 7:15 Is it a case of local racism, or revenge for an attack on a politician's son? Ukrainian Police have charged a non-Romani regional councilor with the premeditated murder of a Romani man committed during an anti-Romani pogrom.  full story

Ukraine: Odessa is flooded with anti-Romani posters

2.1.2017 11:33 Squares and streets in the Ukrainian city of Odessa have recently been flooded with posters featuring portraits of Romani people splattered with blood and messages such as "Roma are bandits and murderers!" Other posters read "Don't forget Loshchynivka", a reference to a case in which a girl from that village was murdered in August, sparking pogroms against local Romani residents.  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

Russia: Massacre of Romani people in the Urals, two dead, six injured, media reporting is biased

14.9.2016 7:56 A tragic exchange of gunfire in Russia between a group of Romani people and three local non-Romani businessmen on Saturday, 3 September has resulted in the deaths of two Romani people and the injury of six. Some media outlets in Russia are reporting the incident as an assault perpetrated by a group of armed Roma on some unsuspecting local entrepreneurs who had no choice but to defend their own lives and protect their family members.  full story

Russia: Romani residents of Tula rebel over gas supplies

29.5.2016 11:35 In one of the biggest Romani settlements in Russia a mass battle took place several weeks ago between local residents and police. The cause was the efforts of gas technicians to cut the Romani residents off from a gas pipe they had illegally been tapping.  full story

Ukraine: Roma in Transcarpathia fear hunger, mobilization and the police

21.3.2015 23:59, (ROMEA) News server Romea.cz has interviewed Romani studies scholar Michael Beníšek about the everyday life of Romani people in the Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod and its environs, their concerns, identity and language, their relationship toward the gadje, their love of Bollywood films and the new wave of Romani refugees from Transcarpathia now entering Britain with Hungarian passports. Beníšek studied Indology and Romani Studies at the Philosophy Faculty of Charles University in Prague, where he then remained at the Romani Studies Seminar as an educator  full story

Ukraine: Terrorist attack in Kharkov results in four dead, hopelessness and insecurity

1.3.2015 20:19, (ROMEA) In the Czech Republic, the bloodshed caused by the shooting in Uherský Brod, the worst such incident in Czech history, has overshadowed media coverage of a terrorist attack committed last weekend against those participating in the "March for Dignity" in Kharkov to mark the first anniversary of the victory of the Maidan uprising. Throughout Ukraine, concerns have multiplied that a new phase of the civil war might be beginning in Kharkov involving an expansion of the war zone and the destabilization of the tense local situation in the run-up to municipal elections this fall.  full story