US State Department: Discrimination, violence against Roma in Czech Republic

Societal discrimination and
violence against Romani people was a serious problem in the Czech Republic last
year, according to the US State Department’s

annual report evaluating adherence to human rights worldwide. The State
Department said the most problematic of the 200 states it evaluated are North
Korea, South Sudan, Syria, and other countries in Africa and Southeast Asia.

The report says a
discriminatory approach toward members of the Romani minority is the Czech
Republic’s biggest human rights problem, in addition to the issues of child
abuse, discrimination against migrant workers, human trafficking, and violence
against women. While last year the Czech Government did take measures to
investigate and punish cases of members of the security forces and other
government offices who were abusing their powers, the report says that in some
areas these offences remain unpunished.

In his preface to the report,
Secretary of State John Kerry named Syria as one of the countries where human
rights are worst-off, stating that “the
government has committed egregious human rights violations in an ongoing
conflict”. He also named the situation in South Sudan as very serious, where
both anti-government rebels and the government itself have committed crimes
against human rights that Kerry said “jeopardize regional security as well as
the democratic future of the world’s youngest country”.

Kerry has also sharply
criticized the North Korean regime for committing executions, crimes against
humanity, and torture. The US has also criticized China’s government for
continuing to restrain fundamental human rights through repression against
Tibetans and Uighurs.

The report said a slight
improvement in the human rights record of the world’s most populated country has
been the partial loosening of its one-child policy. As for the state of human
rights in Russia and Ukraine, US diplomats have been paying a great deal of
attention recently to the tense situation there.

The report says the Russian
regime continued last year to suppress civil society and the political
opposition. Russia also continues to persecute minorities, be they ethnic,
religious, or sexual. 

Last year in Ukraine, the
government of the now-toppled President Viktor Yanukovych increased its pressure
tactics against civil society, against demonstrators trying to persuade the
government to work with Europe, and against journalists. “As
we all just saw, Ukrainians demonstrated once again the power of people to
determine how they are governed,” Kerry wrote in his preface to the report.