Czech Republic: "Counter-petition" asks for Romani inclusion in schools

Several years ago, the "white" parents of first-graders sent the following message to the director of a primary school in Brno:  "We are asking that the first grade classes in the school be created such that the non-Romani children will be together in one and the Romani children in the other. We are warning you that if there are more than three Romani children in a class, we will enroll our children in a different school."

Such pressure to keep non-Romani and Romani children separate was not an isolated incident then and still occurs today. Now the NGO IQ Roma servis has come up with an original "counter-petition".

"We are calling on ‘white’ parents to take pictures of themselves with the message ‘We want our children to have Romani schoolmates’ and to post the photographs to the Facebook profile of our ‘All on One Bench‘ campaign," explains Jan Milota of IQ Roma servis. He admits that in the beginning the campaign will primarily reach the kind of parents who already agree with it.

"We want to demonstrate that such parents exist here and that there a quite a few of them," Milota said. That could be a good starting point for discussions of the issue with those who disagree.

Milota said he would consider the campaign a success if it manages to accumulate 150 – 200 photographs over the next few weeks. An exhibition of the results could ultimately be displayed at Brno City Hall.