Roma, Gypsy and Traveller identity is misappropriated and misrepresented every day for everything from profit to politics. The success of television shows like “Big Fat Gypsy Wedding” — whose new series starts today in the UK — highlights the need to intervene in this one-sided portrayal. Today the Open Society Foundations, in conjunction with Damn Fine Media, launch a three-minute animated film on the history of Roma, Gypsies and Travellers — an important part of the rich identity of these groups and the story of Europe.
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A court in Ostrava on Friday sentenced a 39-year-old man to ten years in prison for killing a Romany man with a crossbow. The killing occurred in the north-eastern town of Chotěbuz last April when four Romany men searched for scrap metal outside the convicted man’s house. The man said he though they were thieves; he told them to leave and fired a bolt at them as they were getting in the car, hitting one of them in the head.
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Around 500 people participated in an anti-Roma demonstration organized in the north-Bohemian town of Duchcov on Wednesday evening in response to a violent attack on a couple by a group of Romanies in the town a few days prior. The demonstration drew a number of potentially-violent right-wing extremists: during an inspection of vehicles entering the town, the police confiscated 22 weapons including baseball bats, machetes and other items. One man was detained during the demonstration itself for disorderly conduct. . .
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A few hundred people gathered in the north Bohemian town of Duchcov on Wednesday evening to protest against a rise in violence, specifically a recent beating of a local couple by a group of Romanies. Although most participants peacefully listened to the organizers and the town’s mayor Jitka Bártová, a couple of hundred people staged an unannounced march towards the neighborhood where most Roma reside, chanting racist slogans.
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Around one-third of Czech 12- and 15-year-old children say they would never have a Roma friend, while 40 percent of them would take part in an anti-Roma rally in their town. These are some of the findings of a survey conducted among more than 1,400 elementary school pupils in the Czech Republic. The study also found a strong emphasis on conformity, says one of its authors Štepán Pudlák from Scio, a Prague-based educational think tank.
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Cardinal Dominik Duka took part in a commemorative ceremony for Romany victims of the Holocaust at the Lety memorial in southern Bohemia on Monday. The event was attended by a number of foreign ambassadors, cultural dignitaries and Roma representatives. Czech political leaders were notably absent this year, with the exception of the deputy speaker of the Senate Miluše Horská.
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The Czech government is going to back a motion in the lower house to establish a remembrance day of the victims of Romany Holocaust, the news agency ČTK reported on Saturday citing government documents. A group of MPs from several parties want to introduce March 7 as the Remembrance Day of the Victims of Romany Persecution during WWII; on that day in 1943, the first transport of Bohemian and Moravian Romanies was sent to the Auschwitz extermination camp. In total, nearly 9,000 Romanies were murdered in the Holocaust, nearly 90 percent of their pre-war population. All ministries have expressed consent with the idea; however, the Foreign Ministry noted Holocaust victims are remembered on January 27.
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The US State Department, in its annual human rights report, criticised the Czech Republic for poor conditions suffered by ethnic Romanies, often socially-excluded and pushed to the periphery. The report maintains, similarly to previous years, that efforts by the government to try and improve the situation have been insufficient.
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