Statewide Association of Romani People in the Czech Republic: New PM should revive Human Rights Minister post

The Statewide Association of Romani People in the Czech Republic has sent the editors of news server Romea.cz an open letter calling on Jiří Rusnok, who has been appointed Prime Minister by Czech President Miloš Zeman, to revive the post of Human Rights Minister. News server Romea.cz publishes the text of that letter below in full translation:

Open Letter:  Czech Prime Minister Rusnok should revive the Human Rights Minister post

The work of the previous governing coalition in the area of resolving the situations of Romani communities has been an enormous disappointment to us. The government of former Prime Minister Nečas underestimated this area and did not pay enough attention to it, as is demonstrated by the resignations of several civil society members of the Czech Government Inter-ministerial Commission for Roma Community Affairs.

In our opinion, after all of the scandals it has been involved in, the entire former governing coalition has no moral right to continue to govern. For that reason, we welcome the decision by President Miloš Zeman to entrust the formation of a new government to Jiří Rusnok.

We are very glad a new government will be created, even if only for a limited amount of time. Relations between the majority population and the Romani minority have recently escalated for the worse under the influence of the overall bad mood in society, caused by the impact of the economic crisis, for which the public is seeking someone to blame.

The media are "spinning" their news reporting in an anti-Roma direction and are significantly contributing to this negative posturing by throwing a bad light on the Romani population as a whole, contributing to the notion that collective blame should be assigned to all Roma for the actions of individuals, and present misleading and sometimes even untrue information about members of the Romani community. This unflattering situation, as well as the crises in our coexistence, are being exploited by right-wing extremists interested in publicity, which we consider a threat to the further democratic development of our country.

We are convinced that the current effort to resolve this situation through the agenda of the Czech Government Human Rights Commissioner is insufficient in practice. Resolution of this thorny issue requires maximum political support, not only from the Prime Minister himself, but from the entire Government of the Czech Republic.  

For this reason, we call on the premier-designate of the Czech Government, Jiří Rusnok, to reinstate the Human Rights Ministry. We firmly believe the new PM will find an appropriate, sufficiently erudite, strong personality for this position who will strive for overall improvements in the design of integration policy for Romani communities in the Czech Republic.