Czech Govt Human Rights Commissioner: Situation for Romani people worse last two years
Monika Šimůnková, the Czech Government Human Rights Commissioner, says the most urgent human rights problem in the Czech Republic is that of the Romani minority. Even though a great deal of money is invested into this area annually, she believes the situation has deteriorated during the past two years. Šimůnková made the statements in an interview for the on-line daily TÝDEN.CZ.
“Romani people feel that not enough attention is being paid to them and the situation in the socially excluded localities is deteriorating. On the other hand, it must be said that a great deal of financing is going into this area. We have to weigh these two arguments and respond truthfully to each side,” she said.
Šimůnková says Romani people complain that the Czech Government Agency for Social Inclusion in Roma Localities is not sufficiently including them in its resolution of Romani issues. “Romani people must be more involved and the Agency must present its positive results more – there are rather a lot of places where they have achieved success,” she said in the interview.
Unlike Michal Kocáb, Monika Šimůnková is not heard from or seen much in the media. “Mr Kocáb had a colleague to handle administration, while I have an unbelievable amount of administrative work to do myself. I’ve been working 14 hours a day for more than three months, at the cost of having no time to publicize the office,” Šimůnková explained.
“I greatly appreciate Michael Kocáb for the many things he has done, but the fact is that the things he did with respect to Romani people were so extensively publicized that it resulted in a bit of a negative effect in the rest of society, which began to think the Human Rights Commissioner does nothing else but focus on Romani people and neglects other vulnerable groups. That’s not true. It must be unequivocally stated that human rights and freedoms apply to everyone,” Šimůnková said.
Šimůnková also indirectly complained about politicians’ lack of interest in human rights issues. “So far, one MP has contacted me because he has a problem with a socially excluded locality in the region he represents, and MP Langšádlová has joined the group on inclusive education for Romani children. There is some interest, but I admit it could be greater,” Šimůnková said. She also commended herself for managing to accomplish quite a lot during not quite four months in office.
“I can list it all for you, I wrote it all up not long ago. In addition to chairing one Government council, I will be Vice-Chair of another five. I visited Lety u Písku twice, where the Romani Holocaust memorial is. Once or twice a week I comment on legislation together with the ministries, during which we really have a lot of clashes – we don’t want the proposed amendments to ruin people’s lives. We succeeded in pushing through a National Action Plan for Domestic Violence Prevention. We are also preparing to run a Council of Europe campaign, ‘Stop Sexual Violence against Children’. In the fight against extremism, we are designing not only a campaign, but together with the Czech Interior Ministry we are preparing activities for suppressing extremist content on the internet. We are doing our best to advocate for compensation for women who have been illegally sterilized, to improve the critical situation in our prisons, and to address the practice of castrating sexual delinquents. This is all work that doesn’t lend itself to presentation through the media – in order for there to be some impact, a great deal of work must be done on all these issues and I have spent hours on them. It’s nice to hold press conferences and say something fabulously attractive, but for me it is much more important to do the small-scale work, step-by-step, that will gradually bear fruit,” Šimůnková told TÝDEN.CZ.
The entire interview is available (in Czech) here.
