IQ Roma servis: Břeclav daily reports on Czech-Roma relations one-sidedly

For quite some time, the Břeclav daily paper has been publishing articles about Czech-Roma relations which we believe are misleading and one-sided. We consider the rumors spread by the daily about discounted prices for Roma at the local swimming pool, or its linking of crime reports exclusively to the Břeclav Roma, to be manipulative and populist, given that they were published during the run-up to elections. We would welcome objectivity based on facts, information and rationality from the media and politicians, specifically the Břeclav daily and the mayor, instead of these emotionally-colored, incomplete, one-sided, open-and-shut reports.

IQ Roma servis has long worked in Břeclav with the local Social-Legal Child Protection Department (Odbor sociálně-právní ochrany dětí) the Labor Office (Úřad práce) and the Probation and Mediation Service (Probační a mediační služba). On the basis of these partnerships, we strive to implement a strategic approach to employment and housing and to increase the educational levels of the socially needy and those at risk of social exclusion in Břeclav We consider Mayor Piškula’s generalizations about the Roma to have been an attempt by his campaign to attract attention, an attempt which shows he lacks even the most basic orientation in the issue at hand. His claim that “the young Roma will all leave school at 5th grade”, etc., is a sick, unsubstantiated example of offering “fear instead of a solution” and degrades the Roma nation as a whole in the lowest possible way. It is also not true that “government programs for Roma integration have ended”. Thanks to EU subsidies, field social workers are working Břeclav once more, a drop-in club has been open in Poštorná street for almost a year, and other steps have been planned at the town hall within the framework of partnership between the public administration and NGOs.

From the point of view of IQ Roma servis, the repeated direct linkages in the press of Czech Roma with crime and “inadaptability” constitute inappropriate defamations which deeply humiliate and injure not just Roma as a group, but particular Roma individuals, directly contributing to the deterioration of relations and to growing ill-feeling in the Czech Republic in general. Who is trying to make those relations and this situation take such a course, who benefits from it?

In our opinion, it is truly essential for everyone to address our mutual co-existence strategically and to channel it positively. We would welcome a similar effort from the Břeclav media and the responsible politicians to whom we have entrusted the administration of our shared interests and the land we have in common.