Veronika Hlaváčová

Czech tabloid will not be inviting ultra-right party representatives to its online debates

15.8.2018 6:42 The daily Blesk tabloid has decided not to invite any politicians from the "Freedom and Direct Democracy" (SPD) party to its candidate debates prior to the autumn elections. After the 2017 elections, reporters from the publication were not given access to the party's events, so the move is one of retaliation.  full story

Czech Constitutional Court rejects complaint from neo-Nazi convicted of 2012 arson

9.8.2018 6:10 Czech Television reported on 7 August that the Czech Constitutional Court has rejected a complaint from neo-Nazi Tomáš Kopecký, who in 2012 committed arson against a residential hotel in the town of Aš where the tenants were Romani. At the time of his attack there were 18 people, eight of whom were children, in the building.  full story

Eyewitnesses allege staff at Czech lake did not help Vietnamese mothers look for their children, who drowned

6.8.2018 9:50 Tragedy struck Lake Lhota near Prague in the Czech Republic last Thursday when two seven-year-old boys were lost - after two hours of searching, they were found, but it was too late. Both boys had drowned.  full story

Italian Police evict almost 400 Romani people from homes they have lived in since 2005, European Commission says it cannot take legal action

1.8.2018 8:18 During the past week the Italian Police have evicted approximately 400 Romani people living in cottages on the outskirts of Rome. They have had to move away from the Camping River campsite, where they have been living since 2005.  full story

Czech Police charge young woman over hateful online speech against first-graders

9.7.2018 7:29 The Czech daily Mladá fronta DNES reports that a young woman from the Tachov area has been charged in the case of the hateful, racist commentaries posted beneath a photograph of first-graders at a primary school in Teplice. If convicted she faces up to three years in prison.  full story

videoCivil society members of Czech Govt Roma Council leave meeting in protest against housing benefit-free zones

19.6.2018 15:03 Romani civil society members of the Czech Govt Council for Romani Minority affairs have left the Council meeting today to protest the current Government's social policy. They are demanding the abolition of housing benefit-free zones and the withdrawal of a bill to amend the Act on Aid to Those in Material Distress even further in a restrictive direction.  full story

videoLIVE: Civil society members of Czech Govt Council for Romani Minority Affairs make statement

19.6.2018 13:24 At 13:30 the civil society members of the Czech Government Council for Romani Minority Affairs will give a statement about the introduction of the legal provision for municipalities to declare areas on their territories as "localities with an increased incidence of socially undesirable phenomena", the so-called "housing benefit-free zones". The Council already called this legal provision in the law on aid to those in material distress discriminatory during its 8 November 2017 session.  full story

videoSlovakia: Romani girl from bad neighborhood did the best on entrance exams, now tutors others

15.6.2018 13:37 Eva Marie Duždová, a Romani girl from Slovakia, is living proof that we should abandon our prejudices and not look at the world in terms of black or white. Eva just came in first place during the entrance examinations for an eight-year college preparatory school in Prešov.  full story

Germany: Crime rates lowest for 25 years, apocalyptic visions of immigrant crime seem to have been exaggerated

29.4.2018 15:27 German newspaper Die Welt reports that recently published statistics for 2017 show that crime overall in Germany is at a record low - compared to 2016, the statistics demonstrate an overall decline of almost 10 %, the biggest in 25 years. The pessimistic predictions made by politicians who are opposed to receiving refugees, who have scared their constituents by predicting Germany would be devastated by crimes perpetrated by immigrants during the next few years, have apparently not come to pass.  full story

videoMEP Soraya Post for ROMEA TV: Antigypsyism exists everywhere in Europe

29.4.2018 8:51 According to Romani MEP Soraya Post, antigypsyism and discrimination against Romani people are a problem in every European country. In Sweden, where she comes from, the general living conditions for Romani people are, in her opinion, much better than in Bulgaria, Hungary or Romania.

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videoCzech MEP Zdechovský for ROMEA TV: Romani projects must have concrete outputs like the Romani scholarships do

29.4.2018 7:29 According to Czech MEP Tomáš Zdechovský (Christian Democrats - KDU-ČSL) the main aim of the EU Roma Week, which began on the occasion of International Romani Day in Brussels, is to familiarize the larger public with the Romani community. "Many people have Romani neighbors, but they know nothing about Romani culture. I believe that's a shame," he said in an interview for the Romani internet television station ROMEA TV.  full story

videoEP Vice President Lívia Járóka for ROMEA TV: There are more Romani MEPs than people realize

28.4.2018 11:02 "Our biggest challenge is to keep our children in the best education," said Lívia Járóka, first-ever Roma Vice President of the European Parliament (EP), in an interview for the Roma internet television station ROMEA TV. Speaking in Brussels during EU Roma Week, the EP Vice President said that her biggest success to date has been the adoption of the European Union's Roma Strategy.

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videoRoma Week at the European Parliament: 40 young Roma discuss antigypsyism with MEPs

27.4.2018 8:07 Activists, experts, organizations working to combat persistent hatred of Romani people in Europe, and politicians have finished the third annual Roma Week at the European Parliament and other EU institutions, which began on 8 April 2018, International Romani Day. According to the organizers, the aim of Roma Week is to bring together Romani activists, experts and youth from the European states in order to contribute to developing a European strategy against antigypsyism and to discussing options for addressing the situation of Romani people throughout Europe.  full story

videoMichal Miko to the Czech Regional Development Minister: Live in a container yourself and then we'll see what you think of it

21.4.2018 11:51 The proposal of the Czech Regional Development Minister to build 55 000 "container" units of housing has outraged various civic activists. Michal Miko, project coordinator for the Slovo 21, z.s. NGO, has taken an unequivocally negative stance on the issue: "The fact that the Government wants to adopt a law making it possible to build 'container' apartment units is unacceptable to me as a civic activist."  full story

Brutal assailant attacks Romani woman in front of her children, Czech Police can't get their stories straight

23.3.2018 16:48

A brutal assailant attacked Lucie Badyová in front of her seven-year-old son and three-year-old daughter last Thursday afternoon on Kapitána Jaroše Street in the Czech town of Kadaň. He punched her, knocking her to the ground and continued his brutal assault as she was prone.

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Czech Justice Minister: State has no solution for social exclusion, Romani children not on an equal footing with others

13.3.2018 6:18 Speaking in an interview for ROMEA TV, Czech Justice Minister Robert Pelikán (ANO) said the state has not yet managed to introduce even a hint of a solution for addressing the problems that arise in socially excluded localities. "This is a big problem for the people living in such localities, but it is also a problem for those living nearby," he said.  full story

Czech MP spreads disinformation alleging that Florida school shooter was an Antifa member

21.2.2018 8:08 A week ago today, Nikolas Cruz, a 19-year-old racist, shot and killed 17 people in Parkland, Florida, USA. Cruz attacked a school that he had been expelled from the year before for disciplinary reasons.  full story

Vice-chair of Czech lower house refuses to discuss Romani genocide with relative of victims live online

11.2.2018 19:47 The chair of the Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust, Čeněk Růžička, says the recent remarks by the vice-chair of the Chamber of Deputies, Tomio Okamura, about the concentration camp for Roma at Lety u Písku are outrageous and unacceptable to the relatives of the victims and survivors. He gave that assessment during a live online program on news server iDNES.cz, "Rozstřel" ("Shootout").  full story

First round of Czech presidential elections saw low turnout in socially excluded localities

23.1.2018 5:55 In socially excluded localities of the Czech Republic, which are predominantly inhabited by Romani people, very few people turned out to vote in the first round of the presidential elections. The lowest turnout was in Hrušov (Ostrava-Silesia), where no ballots were cast at all.  full story

Czech Republic: Romani Studies Seminar taking applications at Charles University

15.1.2018 13:41 While there are at least 10 million Romani people in Europe, there is just one university program in the Czech Republic focused on Romani art, culture, history and the Romanes language. The Romani Studies Seminar is offered by the Department of Central European Studies at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague.  full story