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

Czech Senator Lebeda caught in lies about Romani people

03 October 2014
4 minute read

News server Romea.cz has caught Czech Senator Pavel Lebeda in several lies he told during an interview with the tabloid server Parlamentní listy. Lebeda claimed, for example, that Romani families whose children attend high school receive CZK 1 000 a month from the Education Ministry and that the ROMEA organization pays them CZK 21 000 per year.

Lebeda also said he received statistics about Romani crime from the Office of the Government. All of the institutions involved have objected to his claims.

Lebeda: Thousands of Romani families get money for their children in high school

"I remember one lady who came to my office at the Senate and scolded us politicians for being against the people, for selling out, so I asked her what was going on. She proved to me that thousands of Romani families (I’m used to saying ‘gypsy’, because for most of my life there were Gypsies here and today that is considered to be almost a racist insult, even though it’s not a name, but a description of how that ethnicity behaves) get CZK 1 000 a month from the Education Ministry budget just for enrolling a child in high school. That same gypsy family that enrolls a child into high school can get CZK 21 000 a year from the ROMEA organization just by asking for it," Lebeda said in the interview.  

Zdeněk Ryšavý: “That is total nonsense and a lie. ROMEA provides no such support”

News server Romea.cz asked the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport whether those claims are true. "That is not true. The Education Ministry financially supports Romani pupils only through a development subsidy program entitled ‘Support for Socially Disadvantaged Romani High School Pupils and Romani Higher Vocational School Students’, and the subsidies provided through that program are paid directly to the schools through their establishers, never to a student’s parents," Klára Bílá, spokesperson for the ministry, told Romea.cz.  

The director of the ROMEA organization said Lebeda’s claim that ROMEA provides Romani families with CZK 21 000 a year for sending a child to high school is a lie. "That is total nonsense and a lie. ROMEA provides no such support. We administer a scholarship program here in the Czech Republic only for Romani college students, The financing for it is provided by the Roma Education Fund and always supports around 40 Romani college students per year, not high school students, to say nothing of their families," said Zdeněk Ryšavý, director of ROMEA.

Lebeda invents statistics on Romani crime

Senator Lebeda also pulled out some false statistics on Romani crime during the interview that have been making the rounds online for several years. In his lying, he went so far as to claim the statistics had been provided to him by the Office of the Government.

“The Office of the Government fundamentally distances itself from Senator Lebeda’s statement and rejects the claim that it participated in disseminating information of the nature he described.”

"Prior to the Council of Europe meeting about Roma in the Czech Republic we received statistics from the Office of the Government, and they included some amazing data. For example, 30 % of Gypsies of productive age make a living by breaking the law. That means that in every one of their families, someone is stealing or running an illegal operation, prostitution and such. That’s an unbelievable number, but we received it officially, in writing. According to that same source, the Office of the Governmnet, 60 % of the population of the Czech prisons is Romani," claimed Lebeda in the interview.  

"The Human Rights Section of the Office of the Government, which is, among other matters, responsible for the issue of Romani integration, never provided Senator Pavel Lebeda or any chambers of the Parliament of the Czech Republic with any information that matches the content of Senator Lebeda’s remarks as published in Parlamentní listy," Vanesa Šandová, head of the press department at the Office of the Government, told Romea.cz. "The Office of the Government fundamentally distances itself from Senator Lebeda’s statement and rejects the claim that it participated in disseminating information of the nature he described."    

Lawyer:  This could be a felony

According to lawyer Klára Kalibová of the In IUSTITIA organization, Senator Lebeda may have committed a felony. "The intentional presentation of untrue information about crimes committed by the representatives of any nation could qualify as felony defamation. If such a statement is made effectively, i.e., through print, film, radio, television, a publicly accessible computer network or any similarly effective method, the person who makes the statement, if convicted, faces up to three years in prison," Kalibová told news server Romea.cz.

"Understandably, the Interior and Justice Ministries should object to Senator Lebeda’s claims," Kalibová said. "They should confirm that ethnic data regarding persons who have broken the law is not collected here."

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