News server Romea.cz. Everything about Roma in one place

News server Romea.cz. Everything about Roma in one place

Czech Republic: Romani people remain the most victimized by prejudice

12 October 2016
1 minute read

“The Czech Republic is laying the foundations for a big disaster,” Salim Murad, a political scientist at the University of South Bohemia, told journalist Daniela Drtinová in an interview for the online DVTV.cz broadcaster. Murad studies the perspective of the media and society on minorities, refugees, and other phenomena on the basis of public opinion polls and other data he has been collecting for years.

In the interview, Murad references recent research by the City University of London which found that the Czech Republic had the most negative approach to immigrants of 21 European countries studied. “Some political elites present all of Islam as dangerous because they believe the entire ideology of religion is false and incorporates a gene of evil, or a virus, that makes all Muslims dangerous people, but in reality that’s not true,” Murad noted.

The professor pointed out that the people in the Czech Republic who are the most victimized by prejudice are still the Roma.”To push the Czechs to take the moderate view – that all of the members of a particular community, or a political opinion, or a religion, or a social class, cannot be tarred with the same brush – is getting harder to do,” the professor said.

“I resent having to say that we are better than the Islamic State, an ugly terrorist organization. To do so is to apply the same principles that I see among the Czech political leaders,” Murad said.

“If we’re going to say we won’t accept any refugees other than Christians, we have crossed the threshold of irrationality,” the professor said. “How should the Czech Republic be taking rational stance on this crisis so we can aid the refugees in the countries where they now are?”

Help us share the news about Romas
Trending now icon