Romanies call for nation-wide rallies to condemn racist attacks on their community
The Czech Republic’s Romany community is outraged by the recent arson
attack on one of its members which left a two-year-old girl fighting for
her life and rendered eight people homeless overnight. Several Romany
organizations have called on the authorities to stand up to growing
extremism in the country, and are planning a nationwide protest to step up
public opposition to the neo-Nazi movement.
A schoolteacher from the community of Vítkov, north Moravia where the
torching took place, told reporters on Thursday that the locals were all
appalled by Saturday’s attack in which unknown assailants threw Molotov
cocktails into a Roma family house. The teacher said the attack was totally
unexpected since relations between the majority population and the Romanies
in the village had always been good. But the latest arson attack, in which
a two-year-old girl suffered severe burns on 80 percent of her body, was
the third torching of a Romany house in the last year. The country’s
Romany community is extremely concerned by the growing number of neo-Nazi
marches being held and the increasingly brutal physical attacks on
Romanies. Ivan Veselý is the head of the NGO Dženo, and deputy chair of
the government’s council on Romany issues.
“That was the last drop for the Romany community in this country so we
decided to organize a protest in towns and cities. We must show the
government and the international community a civic attitude, a civic
protest to push the authorities and the police to fight against extremists
and neo-Nazis.”
The protests will take place at the same time on Sunday, May 3, in all the
big cities and a number of other locations. The organizers are calling on
all who condemn the recent attack to join in and they have also started a
money collection for the victims who have been left without a roof over
their heads. But Mr Veselý says that if the authorities are serious about
cracking down on extremists, they have to get down to business.
“The police, or the Ministry of Interior, have not put enough effective
effort in the fight against extremism in the Czech Republic. You will find
many mistakes which the interior minister made in the case of the
Workers’ Party, a neo-Nazi group here in the Czech Republic.”
But better police work and a stricter approach to neo-Nazis alone is not
likely to solve the problem. A study by the EU Agency for Fundamental
Rights, which was released on Wednesday, shows that the discrimination of
Romanies in the Czech Republic is more widespread than in any other EU
country. Two thirds of Czech Romanies said they had been subjected to some
form of discrimination in the past 12 months, while 83 percent of them feel
that they do not have equal opportunities when it comes to getting an
education, finding work, getting medical attention, being served in a
restaurant or getting a bank loan. This is possibly the main reason for the
dramatic, nearly 1,000 percent surge in the number of Czech Romany asylum
claimants in Canada in the last two months. The planned nation-wide rally
will show how much support from the majority population Czech Romanies can
hope for.
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