Czech Human Rights Platform to demonstrate for Human Rights Ministry

The recently-created Human Rights Platform is calling for the incoming government of the Czech Republic to establish a Ministry of Human Rights, Minorities and Equal Opportunities. Its minister would fulfill the function of a liaison between the Government and human rights organizations. 

František Kostlán, one of the platform’s spokespersons, informed the press of this development today. "Our initiative is not discussing specific names, but personally I could imagine that [Czech Helsinki Committee chair] Táňa Fischerová or [former Deputy Ombudsperson] Anna Šabatová, for example, would deserve to be part of the cabinet," Kostlán said, adding that this is his personal opinion and that the choice of a minister is naturally up to the political parties negotiating an eventual coalition.  

Kostlán believes it would be best to establish a Ministry for Human Rights, Minorities and Equal Opportunities complete with its own executive apparatus. It would also be possible to return to the previous model of a minister without a ministry, as was performed most recently by Michael Kocáb and by Džamila Stehlíková before him.

"The problem in that case, however, is that background materials are then prepared by bureaucrats from other ministries who are unfamiliar with human rights issues and who are not even interested in them, for the most part," Kostlán said. Representatives of the initiative will meet in the coming days with representatives of those political parties that won the early elections to the Chamber of Deputies to negotiate this issue.   

Members of the platform are scheduled to meet with Czech Social Democratic Chair Bohumil Sobotka, with the chair of the Christian Democrats, Pavel Bělobrádek, and later with a representative of the ANO movement who has not yet been determined. On Wednesday 11 December 2013 at 12:30 the Human Rights Platform will also hold a "happening" in front of the Office of the Government.   

The Platform brings together more than 40 nonprofit organizations and has been supported by many prominent figures, including Táňa Fischerová and the former Human Rights and Minorities Ministers Michael Kocáb and Džamila Stehlíková. The aim of tomorrow’s "happening" on the occasion of International Human Rights Day is to show that a Ministry of Human Rights, Minorities and Equal Opportunities could become an important tool of the Government with which to combat negative social phenomena such as the discrimination against many different groups on the labor market, loan-sharking, or the exorbitant rents being charged those living in residential hotels.