Separate Is Never Equal

European Roma Still Face Apartheid
(Roma In Europe series)

(European Union Member States Continue To Segregate Roma Children In The Classroom)

The foundation for a better future in any society is found through education. In a world where we are rapidly being reduced to the sum of what our degrees and diplomas say we have achieved there really is no other way forward. Regardless of our own determination and personal ingenuity the world around us views us through paper work. If an portion of our society is thus kept from having access to even the most basic levels of education they are therefore kept from the vast majority of what our society has to offer.

Would we elect government officials that were kept from graduating even the most preliminary levels of education? Would we trust a doctor to treat our ailments if he/she was never able to go to medical school? Would we believe a teacher if he/she had never even been to any form of upper level education?

It is a common trend amongst unskilled labor, the backbone to our economy, that many are placed in those roles due to a lack of education. We may rather enjoy believing that everybody has access to education at any level if they simply apply themselves. This provides us an excuse to look down upon the grocery clerk while ironically they make our daily lives possible. It gives us the ability to stare down our noses while the sun beats down upon the construction workers that slow us down in our daily commutes to our so called prestigious jobs. But what if we knew the stories of these people, if we knew what obstacles they had to overcome, we might look at the systems our society flaunts in a different light.

For some of the most neglected members of our society the story that they start with almost immediately erases the opportunities we take for granted. Personal choice becomes less of a reason for their place in society as society itself begins to hijack those said choices. In the case of the Roma in Europe this hijacking can be summed up as blatant discrimination on the part of governments, local communities, and the society in which the Roma live.

Centuries of looking down upon the Roma as a permanent underclass (or outsiders) has left a systemic discriminatory perception about who the Roma people are. It has left the very name Roma, or gypsy, a sort of slur in and of itself in European society. When someone feels cheated they say they have been "gypped". When a stranger appears to be poorly dressed and unkempt they are flat out referred to as a "gypsy". And then there is the romantic prejudices of the Roma as being fortune tellers, witches, and symbols of bad luck. All of this has left a barrier that Roma people have had to climb over to reach the world that has attempted to go forward while leaving them behind.

Roma children in Europe are the first to notice this when it comes to the hallmarks of childhood. Instead of being allowed into the same school systems that other European children get to go to many Roma children are forced to either attend schools designed solely for Roma or take classes designed for the mentally handicapped. In Greece this has been more evident than in other European states. When schools were built in Sofades (a town comprised of roughly half Roma citizens) the Roma who were closer to schools catering to "Greek" children were told they had to go to schools farther away. The reason: these children were Roma, and Roma children are not allowed to attend school with other children in Greece. Plain and simple discrimination on the basis of ethnicity.

“It’s shameful that, despite three separate European Court rulings now, Greece has failed to change its ongoing discrimination against Romani schoolchildren and the flagrant violation of their right to education,” said Jezerca Tigani, Deputy Europe and Central Asia Director at Amnesty International. 

Last year countless European courts took up the issue of Roma children's rights to an equal education in European schools. These court decisions were considered historic since they for the first time addressed the long upheld discrimination by European society against the Romani people. In many ways these courts took upon the same fight that American schools had been forced to do when they desegregated schools and allowed black and white children to be educated side-by-side. Yet that is a point that European nations tend to avoid since they were supposed to be the leaders in ending slavery, segregation, and all that "old world" bigotry.

Some might ask why we should talk about segregation while Romani families face violent attacks by racists (both in politics and in racist extremist groups) in the Czech Republic and Hungary. Some might ask why we should worry about school while Roma are still facing deportations from France, Germany, Italy, and other "developed" European countries in the West. And while these concerns are very pressing indeed, the open hostility in society at large is the basis for why these conditions exist in the first place. If we are to accept that children can be introduced to the idea that they are less than human from the start of their "education" then we accept that other children can be taught that the prior are the "them" in an "us vs them" scenario. It allows for the effects of discrimination to be imprinted upon the next generation while the one in control allows the cycle to persist.

"What startled me most of all was the unbelievable aggression, the hateful speeches, and the openly racist positions occupied at certain points by the loudest participants, male and female, from the special schools. These are the same people who meet disadvantaged Romani children and their parents every day. They are the very people who educate those children, " said Michaela Marksová-Tominová, Czech Shadow Minister for Human Rights and Equal Opportunities.

When hate is allowed to be the first taste of what a society has to offer for a child it becomes a lens through which that child will view the world in which he/she lives. While many can overcome this discrimination through hard work on their own part, many others cannot. It is an obstacle that chips away at what our society can be and will become. It destroys the foundation of a society for generation to come. Thus permitting the instability we have lived with thus far to persist into the world we leave behind for our children and grandchildren.

When we deny education to a child we aren't telling that child he/she can be anything that they can dream of. We tell that child that they aren't valuable in our society. We tell them that for as long as they are alive they will always be outsiders in our community. The denial of education (full, equal, and integrated)  is a method of oppression and rejection. It forces upon the next generation the prejudices of the previous generation. And for this reason it denies society at large the hope for a better future.

If Europe is to continue forward in its progressive views on what it means to be European they will have to come to terms with their past. Either they fully integrate the Romani people into European (accepting the differences and not forcing assimilation) or Europe admits that they are a society that accepts apartheid. For in a world where we claim that "all men are created equal" we can never expect that being kept separate be viewed as equality.


























Source Documents
(Note: not all sources listed)

Amnesty International
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/european-court-again-chides-greece-over-discrimination-against-roma-schoolchildren-2013-05-30

Open Society Foundation
http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/roma-education-2013-time-europe-remedy-its-democratic-deficit

Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/artur-conka/roma-families-in-europe_b_3253404.html

Prague Daily Monitor
http://praguemonitor.com/2013/05/24/%C4%8Dr-fails-deal-segregation-romani-students-ai-report-says

Racial Tensions Still Rising

Romani Still Targeted By "Ethnic Majority"
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As local police struggle to push back the hordes of racially charged "ethnic Bulgarians" and "White Czechs" the special police units are pulling out. The petrol bombs may have stopped flying for the time being but the racist crowds have not stopped massing. And it is this fact that has many Roma in Northern Bohemia worried.
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In the Czech Republic local "ethnically Czech" peoples have resorted to finding new ways to drive the Roma out of Bohemia. Some have pooled their money together to purchase the homes of Roma without the consent of the Roma themselves. Others have begun trying to push legislation to make public bans on Roma living in their select villages. All in all, the sounds echoing out of Bohemia are starting to sound more and more like the Nazi era.
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In Bulgaria the white population has still refused to stop their assault on Roma. Burning and torching of Roma homes continues as police fight to keep the assailants at bay. When out in public the Bulgarian Roma now have to fear random style attacks by neo-Nazi inspired youth. These same attacks have been used for years in Russia to target Islamic immigrants from former USSR held territories. It is a tactic used by the Russian neo-Nazi movement.
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The only good news coming out of the region is that some action is being taken to combat the rise of ethnic violence. In the Czech Republic today 14 Czechs face charges for assaulting Roma for racial reasons. This sort of action is finally starting to become the normal reaction in the Czech Republic instead of the old reaction of doing nothing.
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In Bulgaria however the news is still sour at best. Journalist who show any sympathy for the Roma or even fairness in their reporting are called "Jews". The use of the old scapegoat as an insult shows just how far Bulgaria has fallen. They are now bathing in the Nazi doctrine. And there isn't any sign of hope for their revival any time soon.
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Source Documents, please note not all documents used are shown below.
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The Prauge Post
http://www.praguepost.com/news/10461-police-pull-back-in-north-bohemia.html
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Romea.cz
http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2908
http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2909
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Prauge Daily Monitor
http://praguemonitor.com/2011/10/25/fourteen-czechs-face-racism-charges-assaulting-roma
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The Guardian (blog)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2011/oct/24/bulgaria-press-freedom?newsfeed=true
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Novinite.com
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=132646

Educational Discrimination Against Romani Children Part of Czech Unrest

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Czech Television station ČT24 has posted an article to its website reporting on the connection between the current unrest in Šluknov district and discrimination against Romani people in the schools. Such discrimination has been linked for decades in the Czech Republic to the provision of special education.
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The unrest in Šluknov region is rooted in the ongoing discrimination being practiced against Romani children at elementary schools there. For decades, the state has permitted intellectually healthy Romani children to be educated at schools for the intellectually disabled. After the practice was criticized, the state renamed the schools concerned, changing "special" ("zvláštní") schools into "practical" ("praktické") ones. Irremediable harm has been done to these children, because without a normal education, Romani people have no chance on the labor market. Among Romani residents of the residential hotel in Varnsdorf which police officers have been protecting from attack by non-Romani locals recently, only half of the local children currently attend mainstream schools.
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A full 27 % of Romani children without intellectual disabilities are still attending the renamed "special" schools throughout the country. "Special schools are intended for the intellectually disabled. Tell me: Is it possible for such a high percentage of any population to be intellectually disabled?" asks Iveta Němečková, a special needs educator.
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There are 400 ghettos total in the Czech Republic where an estimated 30 000 children live. Just like their parents when they were of pre-school age, many of these children have small vocabularies in Czech, may not yet know the words for colors or shapes (or may not distinguish colors), and may not yet grasp certain concepts. However, they are not intellectually backward, just socially deprived. They therefore have even more of a need for a normal education. "That's how they become familiar with the majority society, how they establish relationships with other children and start perceiving social norms and values in a natural way," said Klára Fischerová, a special needs educator working at the Lyčkovo náměstí Elementary School in Karlín.
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In 2007, the Czech Republic lost a case at the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg, which found in favor of Romani citizens who complained they had been unjustifiably educated in special schools. The practice is continuing and has been criticized by the Czech School Inspectorate and the ombudsman.
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Segregated education has a sad tradition of devastating impacts among the Roma. Those living in the ghettos today are often graduates of the days when special education was developed in full in Czechoslovakia during the 1970s. "A disproportionate percentage of the Romani population were educated in special schools, as many as 70 % of Romani children at the height of the practice," Němečková pointed out.
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According to a World Bank study published last year, eight out of 10 Romani people currently of economically productive age have only ever completed an elementary education. If their children don't get a chance for a better education, they will end up on welfare. The situation is a vicious circle.
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"It's not true that information has not been available about this, but for some reason there has never been interest at the highest levels, such as the Czech Education Ministry, or even in regional government. If we don't address this now, it will catch up to us in time," said Ivan Gabal, a sociologist and author of several pieces of research into the unequal position of Romani children.
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The state already knows how to address the situation. One elementary school in Prague's Karlín neighborhood could serve as a model, where rich and successful people are neighbors with families living in existential deprivation and everyone sends their children to the same schools.
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"The children are satisfied, that's important. We are the clients of these children and their parents, so we want to guarantee education for all," school director Jan Korda said. The Romani population of the school is 10 %, or two or three pupils in each class. Class 6.B also includes a girl of Vietnamese origin and a hearing-disabled boy. They live on the same street and attend the same class.
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"We're all children and we should be friends, not be separated," said Anežka Novotná from class 6.B. Whether the situation will change in Šluknov district remains an open question.
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Romea.cz Article
http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2813

Once The Roma Start Using Twitter...

Article by Romea.cz
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The electronic media - television in particular - have unfortunately played a large role in the hysteria created around the problems with coexistence between the "majority society" and the Romani community in the Šluknov foothills. The populism of various politicians has also played a big role.
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Various television stations have been and are reporting on the situation in Rumburk or Varnsdorf in a one-sided, populist manner - and sometimes directly in an apocalyptic style. Government politicians, under pressure from the unrelenting problems in their own coalition, have sensed the opportunity to flex their "muscles". It's not that there are not serious problems in the Šluknov foothills, but it cannot be a total coincidence that these problems have moved to the center of the country's attention at the very moment the governing coalition is introducing many anti-social measures through its reforms.
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The tactic of "divide and conquer", or inciting society against itself, is a tried-and-true political tool. In other countries where governments have gone down the path of unpopular measures, it has worked for them to incite the poor - or the lower middle class who are being rendered poor by the reforms - against those who are the very poorest, often those afflicted by total social exclusion.
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The rhetoric used in such cases is rather simple: During hard times, we must all make sacrifices, and unfortunately our world is being ruined by a layer of parasites and "moochers" who in addition are terrorizing our fellow citizens with their violence - citizens who may be poor, but who are honest, hard-working, and who pay their rent. Then, when the resentful "nation" takes to the streets demanding harsh measures and security, the television cameras movingly follow the socially "adaptable" dads, moms, teenagers and children as they take out their justified anger against the "inadaptables", demanding decisive measures. If the police weren't stopping them, the "adaptables" would be only too glad to beat those Roma up.
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We cannot make light of a certain justified degree of desperation currently being felt by locals in some towns over rising crime. However, a deeper analysis is missing from this flood of emotionally extreme television reports.
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For example, the information is not being delivered to the public that the Czech government, for more than 20 years since communism fell, has not managed to propose social policy or other measures to prevent the creation of the Romani ghettos into which politicians and town counselors are moving Romani people who once lived in town centers. These evictions are often a cynical display of corruption and gold-digging, with "the market" cutting its teeth on the potentially lucrative buildings in which the Romani tenants are residing.
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Various human rights organizations and think tanks have long warned that the Czech Republic is stirring up an enormous problem for itself by creating these ghettos, of which there are already several hundred, just as it is by segregating Romani children in the schools and adopting ineffective social policies. This is compounded by the fact that the freedom of "the market" to pick and choose who will be in the work force has never been considered an effective anti-discrimination policy for states to adopt in societies riddled with anti-minority prejudice.
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The people who have been evicted into the ghettos have nothing left to lose, because the ghetto is, for most of them, the "terminus". There are no (legal) jobs near the ghettos, and drugs, gambling and loan-shaking are the norm there. Children from an early age are learning how to survive in environments where they have never seen anyone hold a regular job.
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The superficial reporting by the media, and the populist outcries of politicians in response to the problems now arising in the vicinity of these ghettos, are food for racist stereotypes, according to which "only repression against them will work", because - "What's the point of discussing it?" - this problem is, so to speak, "genetic". When I recently published an opinion piece on how the invisible hand of the market is contributing to the creation of ghettos while the state passively ignores the problem, I received many responses to it in that vein.
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It's not surprising that various neo-Nazi fighting units who want to settle accounts with the "inadaptables" by using force - or at least squeeze some political capital out of it - have started feeding off of these desperate citizens' marches with lightning speed. Unfortunately, the government has come quite close to operating on the "skinhead" level itself. An otherwise indecisive Prime Minister, evidently inspired by the British government's recent response to unrest in British towns, has theatrically sent police reinforcements to maintain order in the Šluknov foothills.
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There is nothing wrong with modestly ensuring order where it is being repeatedly violated, but the publicized, forceful speeches about the police reinforcements remaining there as long as necessary - and that if necessary people from the Police Presidium will roll up their sleeves as well - are completely beside the point, because they are not addressing the essence of the problem. When the Prime Minister then says the new method for disbursing welfare payments will contribute to solving this problem because people will have to earn their welfare by performing public service, it is clear that even worse times lie ahead for us.
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In the final analysis, the actual failure of social policy must always compensated for by repression. Of course, more prisons, police officers, and special forces do not, in the end, cost as much as an active social policy - but they also don't solve the problem. They just push it under the surface. Moreover, if we "Řápkovize" the Romani problem through programs of harassment and repression, it is completely certain that it will lead to the radicalization of the people in the ghettos with nothing left to lose.
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Here it must be ironically added that the police and the "majority society" in general are in great luck that the Roma have not yet learned to use "Facebook" and "Twitter". When the Prime Minister made the sweeping gesture of deciding to deploy riot police in the battle with the "inadaptables" in a ghetto in just a single town, I could not help but rather mischievously imagine what the government would do if Romani activists suddenly used social networking sites to call for unrest in the hundreds of ghettos the Czech Republic has allowed to develop. I guess the Prime Minister's colleagues at the Office of the Government would have to help out in addition to the bureaucrats from the Police Presidium.
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The same applies to the Czech skinheads. The hard core of neo-Nazis is said to have hundreds of members and several thousand fellow-travelers. There are an estimated 300,000 - 500,000 Romani people in the country. What if they start organizing like the right-wing radicals? The catastrophic social policy of the Czech state has not yet managed to move all of the Roma into the ghettos, but the tens of thousands of people who have ended up there are just a bomb waiting to explode.
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Please Note That This Post Is Not The Original Content Of Alder's Ledge.
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Source.
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Romea.cz
http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2793

Stepping Stones

To Hell.
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As tensions in the Northern part of the Czech Republic continues to build the violence continues to spark. Just recently we reported on how the Roma (a small segment of the Roma population that is) were beginning to push back. A few violent attempts as gaining the high ground have led to violence in return. And now it is the ethnic Czechs turn at dishing out more violence of its own.
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Recently four Czech men severely beat a Rom with baseball bats in an apparent retaliatory attack for the Romani youth who had attacked four Czechs. An eye for an eye is clearly the rule of Northern Bohemia these days. And the battle field is ripe with those willing to dish out its brutal law.
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Police have shown that they are either unwilling or incapable of stopping the violence. Riot police have been used only after the violence has begun. Parades by the neo-Nazis have been allowed to occur even when violent hate speech had preceded these displays of force. Mobs readily allowed to form while the authorities stood uninterested on the sidelines.
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In the town of Rumburk, Czech Republic, 1,500 ethnic Czechs took to the streets to "protest" the Roma population. Their bigoted message was amplified by the Czech Social Democrat Party who sponsored their "right" to such a hate filled cause. These fascist leaning citizens quickly turned from an organized rally to a flash mob of sorts.
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Seventeen minutes after the rally had begun a local citizen took the microphone and called upon his fellow mob members to take to the streets with pickaxes and pitchforks. The politicians claim this is when they called the "rally" off. But the actions they had set into motion would not stop just because the politicians wanted them to. This was now an officially sanctioned mob. This was an army raised by the Czech Social Democrat Party.
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Not waiting to gather the weapons of they had been called to use, the army of thugs and Nazis stormed the "Rumburk Triangle". This was a name given to a pair of apartment buildings occupied mainly by Roma families. It was there that the violence began. It was there that the far-right of the Czech Republic launched stones, rocks, and tree limbs into the homes of Roma families.
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The petrol bombs that the Czech Nazi movement had promised did not arrive, thankfully. However the screaming and beating on the doors lasted some time before the Czechs left. Their voice had been made known. Their threats had been heard. And now it was time for them to move on to their next target.
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Moving on to a single level home, occupied by one Roma family, the ethnic Czechs began to attack the home in any way they could. The first of the mob to reach the home began the attack by breaking out windows. For the rest of the attack the mob continued to threaten to "burn the Gypsies alive". Once again, thankfully the Nazi made petrol bombs never materialized.
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This is when the Czech police say that they began to "monitor" the attacks from a helicopter overhead. They also claim that the only reason the police did not stop the mob was because the presence of young children. In our opinion this excuse is an excellent reason to stop the attacks.
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Waiting for the mob at the next target, riot police stood aside as the attackers targeted another apartment building. It was there that the mob broke down a fence to get at the Roma families. And it was by this time that the mob showed real intent to cause actual harm. The rabid mode of the mob was in full swing.
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Breaking in windows, a few mob members began to show interest in getting in and personally attacking the Roma within. Finally the riot police began to step in. But the damage was done. The homes had been vandalized. The rule of law had shown its weakness... its lean toward the right.
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We know that if history is not learned from it than we are damned to repeat it. We know that the Czech Republic has shown in the past that it is willing to allow hate crimes to occur against Romani citizens. We have seen houses burned out and Roma shot in the back as they fled the attacks. These mobs are just another step toward the end goal of the Nazi movement... extermination.
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Will we be seeing this in the coming weeks? Another form of genocide... the pogroms of old Russia? Is the Czech Republic's ethnic tension just a stepping stone toward another pharrajimos (devouring)?
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Time will tell. But until we know for sure we can only scream so that the world might listen. We must call for an end to this that doesn't involve the deaths of even a few Roma, let alone hundreds, thousands, or millions.
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Source Documents, Note that not all sources are listed.
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Romea.cz
http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2744
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2761
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2734
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2755
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2762
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2745
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Fighting Back

(Picture above is of a Romani girl who fled to Canada, the scars on her chest were put there during a racial attack she suffered in the Czech Republic)
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Tensions Rising in Czech Republic
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The old phrase "out of sight, out of mind" seems to be proving itself wrong once again in the Czech Republic. As the government encourages the forcible moving of Roma families from all over the country to the Sluknov foothills area. This move is just the start of a new wave of ghettoizing the Roma minority in the Czech Republic. A system of social exclusion that is now spawning the need for state intervention through violent reactions to a system the government created.
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But before I get at the reason for the violence let me first explain the attacks a little further.
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Tensions appear to have begun growing as the waves of new Roma families began to appear in the Sluknov area. Racial tensions then continued to grow as the "majority population" began to organize anti-Roma events in protest of the continued arrival of Roma (who didn't want to be in the Slukov area anyhow). And yet nothing was really going too awfully wrong till about a week ago.
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That is when the racial tensions flared up (literally) when Molotovs began to fly. Attacks on Roma families began to be reported as the far-right continued to organize. Families that had been removed from areas of the Czech Republic where they had been victimized were now being attacked in Northern Bohemia.
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However it wasn't till a couple days ago that the Roma began to fight back. That was when a racial attack surpassed all others in its shear brutality. A delivery van driver was reported to have rapidly accelerated as he drove over a five year old Roma boy. The majority population however seems to have united behind the delivery driver as they continue to blame the dead boy for the racial attack that ended his life.
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This is what led to the attacks on the "majority" by the minority population. Roma have finally stomached enough violence to be ready to unleash some of their own. And thus you end up with attacks like the one a day ago when twenty Roma attacked four "majority population" men.
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The attack was brutal in nature and ended up with one of the victims in the hospital with broken bones. The Romani had attacked the four men outside and then broken in their door to attack the four men in their home. They had even used clubs of some sort in the attack on the "majority".
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So how does this sort of issue arise so quickly?
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Well first of all it has been an issue that has been bubbling to the surface for some time now. It began way back in 1989 when the economy in the Czech Republic sort of crashed. Roma who had worked just like everyone else in the economy were the first to be given the pink slips. As a result they were forced out of the productive society and into the world of welfare.
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For two generations now the Roma have been doing anything they can to get back on their feet. This would have been easier had the Czech government not taken the actions it did earlier this year. Now we are witnessing how that second generation, a generation that no longer remembers what it is to work for a living, reacts to being forced into a ghetto lifestyle.
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Earlier this year the Czech government took actions it claims are to reduce the debt of government by cutting its expenditures. It is choosing to do this by cutting the Romani people out of the welfare state it created three decades ago. It is not however choosing to find ways to put these people back to work. It is not attempting to find ways to grow its taxable population by decreasing its welfare population through honest labor.
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Like the rioters in London these Romani are people who know a life that the state has provided for them. Every attempt to break free from this sort of indentured servitude proves unsuccessful for most Roma. Even a college education proves useless when the "majority population" seems unshakable in their resolve to exclude the Roma. They are after all the first to loose their jobs and the last to be hired back into the work force.
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Thus we have a situation that seems tailor made for the Czech government. A situation where only the strong arm of the law can solve the issue at hand. And that always makes people like me a little worried.
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In both the past and present the Czech government has shown an over willingness to ghettoize the Roma. The Czech government seems to have a love affair with forcing the Roma out of secular society. And this recent out break of racial violence (violence that the Czech government should had seen coming with the current rise of far-right rhetoric) forces a situation which only the law can handle.
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We will have to wait to see what happens but in my humble opinion this problem has no happy ending. Violence begets violence. And the result of this violent outbreak can only serve to fuel the flames of the fascist movement in Eastern Europe.
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Source Documents (Note that not all sources used are listed)
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Prague Monitor
http://praguemonitor.com/2011/08/22/romani-group-reportedly-attacks-four-men-north-bohemia
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Romea.cz
http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2725
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2714
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2711
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2727
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2706
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CBC News Canada
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2009/06/25/roma-czech-asylum062509.html

The Good Fight

Summer Update
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And we are back. After a little interruption due to a "differing point of view" we have returned to the good fight. So here is what has happened since our last update.
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The United States has entered into the fight against the Romani people. Town ordinances, local laws, and even the state of New Jersey has been levied against the Roma along the east coast. The attempt here is to keep the Roma on the road and to keep them from entering into the community. Here at Alder's Ledge we find this practice deplorable.
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In the media we have watched as Kathy Lee Gifford (on the Today Shows fourth hour) maligned the entire Romani people by characterizing them as child abusers who exploit their children to rob and pillage unsuspecting white trash TV host.
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And in Europe, well that theater has remained the same all summer long. The Eastern Front (Romania, the Balkans, and Hungry) have continued to allow their local "civilized" citizens to attack and harass the Roma. While back West (France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Ireland, and many more) the Roma are now being forced back out onto the road. In London the fires were used not just to loot and rob but to mask the attacks on Romani camps (sites the government was legally responsible for). All the while the police were able to ignore the attacks on human life because their local children were out doing the very things the locals claim the Roma are responsible for.
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In Ireland (Northern Ireland to be exact) the Roma have suffered countless attacks in attempts to force the Roma out of the cities. In the country side they are outright savaged as the local "civilized" population is allowed to practice their hedonistic desires and racist prejudice.
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A few days ago in the Czech Republic yet another Molotov Cocktail was thrown into a Romani family's home. And yet the police seem incompetent in finding and arresting the attacker or attackers. However in a twinge of hope the locals have finally started to show that they have had enough. Apparently attacking a family that the locals know to have an infant inside the home is finally overstepping the bounds of "civilized society". It was not overstepping the bounds of Czech society when just a week prior a gang of white supremacist had broken into a Roma home and nearly beaten the father to death. Or when a few days earlier a racially motivated torch attack was carried out in a neighboring town.
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The Czech Republic has also recently decided that it will not allow local citizens to adopt children from abroad. It is however stepping up its attempts to "export" Romani children. This attempt plays into the appearance of preparing to or even carrying out genocidal acts.
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In Austria the rise of far-right extremism has now been recorded to have risen by 31% over 2009. Many of these new attacks have been coming from groups that have decided to target the Roma. And this makes sense for hate groups just starting out since the local police are less likely to enforce the law when it is Romani being attacked.
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Meanwhile in France old Saint Nich (Sarkozy) is loosing his fight with the French Roma population. They continue to run and hide as his hounds continue to nip at their heels. They have been encountering growing hunger and increasing poverty and yet they remain in France. Those who have been deported continue to find their way back into France. And those who were paid 300 dollars to leave are now taking another pay out to leave once again. But old Nich is still pushing his racist agenda as he steers France toward the nationalism that once conquered it by force.
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All this has happened in the month or so that I have been kept from posting. And now we are back. Now we will continue to be "the rust upon your gears, the insect in your ear". We will continue to fight and all you have to do is continue to read.
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Information is power. The power to resist. The power to fight. The power to win.
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-
Source Documents for this post... (Note that not all sources are listed)
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Romea.cz
http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2683
&
http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2691
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2707
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2686
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2679
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2671
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Roma Still Being Attacked - Amnesty International

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Still Separate and Unequal


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"Three years after the European Court for Human Rights judgment which confirmed that the separate, substandard education of Roma people should be prohibited, the government has still not succeeded in bringing an end to discrimination in the country's education system," Amnesty reported in its annual report of human rights violations in the Czech Republic.
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In March of 2010 the Czech government initiated its National Action Plan of Inclusive Education. This is intended to prohibit the segregation of children based upon their "condition or disability". It does not however address the fact that Czech Republic schools still can and will segregate children based upon their ethnic origins. A fact that has led to the placement of Romani children into classes designed for the mentally handicapped.
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The National Action Plan of Inclusive Education also fails to place a time for which the schools must be integrated. It does not give a set date for the classes to be altered in their current designs. And no incentive for integration has been given except the loosely based idea that the government has mandated it.
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Amnesty also reported that the Czech Republic allows and in some cases promotes the "open hostility" that Roma face in Czech society. They did recognize that the Czech government had brought a handful of people to justice years after they had reportedly attacked Romani peoples. Unlike Amnesty however I do not nor have not agreed with the sentences handed down to the few assailants charged in these attacks.
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Until the racist past of the Czech Republic taught in the public schools, to all students, they can not assume it will ever end. This is a problem that Amnesty seems to overlook. This is an issue that the Czech government does not want to address. It is simply easier to maintain the status quot... it is simply easier to believe that their is nothing wrong with the current racist attitude of Czech society.
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If the same situation happened here in America we would be in arms to stop it. However when the European governments permit the segregation and demonetization of a given race we here in United States seem to be the ever ready and willing accomplices. Where is the outcry to force and end to this treatment of the Roma in Europe? Where is your courage to speak America?
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Source Documents
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Romea.cz
http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2445
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The Prague Monitor
http://praguemonitor.com/2011/05/13/ai-czech-roma-discriminated-against-education
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Politics.Hu
http://www.politics.hu/20110513/amnesty-international-report-underscores-climate-of-fear-facing-hungarian-roma
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"Peace! Rule of Law! No fascists!"

And the Jack-Boots Go Marching On...
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And on... and on...
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The Roma of Hejoszalonta united against the storm troopers the Magyar Garda. With their community linked arm in arm they shouted "Peace! Rule of Law! No Fascists!". And yet the black uniformed Jobbik army still went marching on.
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Stomping their jack-boots and lifting torches the neo-Nazi army stormed the village of 850, only 350 of which are Roma. Their angry tone was amplified in the blaring of their heavy metal rock music. The sound of the bass drum mocked the sound of war drums as the "Magyars" attempted to spread terror amongst their intended victims.
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In March the Jobbik party had organized a larger march in Gyongyospata where around 3,000 of the black shirts raised their torches and whips. There they had marched up and down the village streets as they shouted their anti-Semitic and anti Roma chants. All in the name of Nationalistic pride.
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"Jobbik were deliberately provoking them. Parents held the teenagers back because the fascists wanted an excuse to attack. It would have been a bloodbath," an observer noted in Hejoszalonta. Had the Roma youth been allowed to lash out the battle would have been a "bloodbath". The homes of Roma and suspected Roma would have been set ablaze. The women and children would have been beaten to an inch of their lives and their men shot. This is how Jobbik treats Hungarian Roma.
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When Roma and Human Rights Activist petitioned the government to form a "human chain" between the Magyar Garda and the Roma houses the government forbid them to do so. Instead they allowed the Jobbik clan to march right up to the Romany houses with torches ready. Armed men with fire in hand were allowed to terrorize the Roma children held captive behind chicken wire.
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In the past Hungary and much of the Eastern Block nations have witnessed and participated in pogroms that start much like the scenario listed above (thankfully this one ended without bloodshed). Jobbik and its Magyar Garda allies have committed such acts of genocidal ferocity. Men, women, and children are all considered "targets" simply because they are Rom.
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Most of the time these scenes end with Roma houses being burnt out. In the Czech Republic these scenes end with a Roma body found filled with holes. In Romania these scenes end with a Roma boy found bloody face down in a muddy river. Yet Jobbik still seems capable of holding its seats in Hungarian government?
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This sort of fascist behaviour can not be rewarded by the outside world. Other European countries need to apply pressure on Hungary and force change in its ever leaning right culture (but most of them too are leaning the same direction these days). And most of all, America needs to be more vocal in its defense of what we consider to be inalienable human rights. We need to condemn these kind of acts where ever and whenever they occur... regardless of who is committing them.
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"Peace! Rule of Law! NO FASCISTS!"
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Civil society resistance to Nazis rising in Hungary

From Romea.cz
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First joint protests held by anti-racism NGOs
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Last Saturday the Hungarian opposition Jobbik party held a demonstration against alleged "Gypsy terror" in the settlement of Hejoszalonta, roughly 150 km to the east of Budapest. Hungarian civil society confronted the demonstration.
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Roughly 600 sympathizers and MPs of the neo-Nazi Jobbik party met in Hejoszalonta. The party won 17 % of the votes in last year's parliamentary elections, the first time it has ever held seats in the Hungarian Parliament. Some demonstrators were wearing uniforms of the Hungarian Guard, an organization which the courts have dissolved for its similarity to the Hungarian fascist brigades in operation at the end of the Second World War. The Hungarian Guard, like the dissolved Workers' Party in the Czech Republic, has been exacerbating inter-ethnic relationships in society for years. Their agitation eventually led to homicidal attacks against Roma people during which a minimum of nine people, some of them children, died and dozens of people have been injured, some of them severely. After the Hungarian Guard was dissolved, alternative organizations immediately sprang up with names such as the "New National Guard" or "Hungarian Crew".
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At the rally, Jobbik representatives also criticized the government's economic policy. The governing Fidesz party, in their view, has become the party of the rich. Hungarian MP Marton Szegedi (Jobbik) told the rally: "They take absolutely no care of the ordinary farmer in this country.”
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Organizations for the protection of civil and human rights, such as Amnesty International, organized a counter-demonstration last Saturday. In their call for a counter-demonstration, they declared that "it is not possible to pronounce Roma people the generators of all evil. It is unacceptable for various extremists to attempt to take justice into their own hands." They also demand an end to the discrimination of Roma in the country.
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Agnes Daroczi, a Roma political writer and chair of the Roma association Pralipe, speaking in front of roughly 150 counter-demonstrators on Saturday, said: "Many of us are terribly poor only because we were born Roma. We need a color-blind policy that will reach those on the fringes of society."
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Ilonka Balogh, a Roma woman from Hejoszalonta, was aghast at the fact that police did not prevent the neo-Nazi gathering from taking place near her home and feared for her family's safety. Jozsef Anderko, the mayor of the village who unwillingly permitted Jobbik to hold the gathering there, admitted that pickpocketing is a problem in Hejoszalonta, but generally evaluated relations among people in the village as good.
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A tutor from the local school who is an ethnic Hungarian also participated in Saturday's neo-Nazi march. Roma women from the village are now drafting a petition to have her removed from her position. "At the nursery school, 90 % of the children are Roma. It is not appropriate that she teach there now," Ilonka Balogh said.
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The Jobbik party is demanding that authorities keep files on so-called Roma criminality. According to party representatives, members of the Roma minority are the main cause of increased crime in the countryside. Other parliamentary parties have now jointly taken a strong exception to the Jobbik demands for the first time ever.
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Hungarian Guard brigades also recently marched through Gyöngyöspat, a village in the northeast of the country. For more than two weeks they literally terrorized Roma inhabitants there, who stopped leaving their homes or sending their children to school as a result. Under pressure from police and protests from abroad, they eventually had to end their marches. This is the first time representatives of various civic associations have met to protest these racist actions.
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Amnesty International and other organizations from around the world demanded of the Hungarian government in March that it better ensure security for members of the Roma minority. At the end of March, the trial began in Budapest of four men charged with organizing a minimum of nine homicidal attacks on Roma families throughout the entire country in 2008-09.
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This coming Saturday, the Czech political party DSSS is organizing a similar march in the North Bohemian village of Krupka. Various civic associations are organizing counter-demonstration
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Article Taken From Romea.cz
http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2313
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Romea.cz - Stehliková: Human rights trampled under the hooves of horses

Romea.cz - Stehliková: Human rights trampled under the hooves of horses

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Was yesterday's police intervention against the Roma people and others demonstrating against the neo-Nazis proportionate?
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This story started long before groups of right-wing extremists decided to meet on the morning of Saturday, 12 March and march through the Roma quarter of Nový Bydžov in order to terrorize the residents. It started long before the 51 mayors met in Nový Bydžov to discuss tactics for "how to take on the socially inadaptable" (to use the term introduced by former Mayor of Chomutov Ivana Řápková (Civic Democrats - ODS) instead of the more correct term of "the socially excluded"). The mayors agreed on a "Mayoral Declaration", the content of which was a proposal for repressive measures that would intrude into the private lives of all citizens, not just the socially excluded.
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Our story started when the Mayor of Nový Bydžov, Pavel Louda (ODS), decided to bank solely on denouncing and repressing the socially deprived instead of guiding the town toward integration of the socially excluded. Instead of applying for assistance from the Czech Government Agency for Social Inclusion in Roma Localities, he found a quick shortcut to the rapid scoring of political points.
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When a recidivist who is reportedly "half-Roma" allegedly raped a 21-year-old girl in Nový Bydžov last November, the mayor's issued a statement labeling "Gypsies" as the culprits for this brutal crime. In that statement, the mayor does not distinguish between the "orderly" families of longtime Roma residents and the newly-arrived "problematic" families, but tars all Roma people with the same brush, even though escalating hatred against a particular group because of its alleged criminality in the town is no solution. The mayor's statement divided locals even more and strengthened the anti-Roma mood.
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It is therefore not surprising that right-wing extremists are welcome in Nový Bydžov. Ever since the conflict at the Janov housing estate in Litvínov, we have seen that the extremists' tactic is to seek the support and sympathy of local populations in problematic localities.
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These extremists, aided by their marches through excluded localities predominantly inhabited by Roma people, are promoting themselves in public life and striving to enter politics. Perhaps the most active and best-known of these groups is the extreme-right Workers' Social Justice Party (Dělnická strana sociální spravedlnosti - DSSS), the successor to the banned Workers' Party (Dělnická strana - DS). This is the party that convened the demonstration in Nový Bydžov on Saturday, 12 March 2011, allegedly at the request of local residents and despite a call from the mayor not to come to the town.
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The illegal Movement of Autonomous Nationalists then affiliated itself with the demonstration. According to Green Party chair Ondřej Liška, who was present at Saturday's events, other neo-Nazi and ultra-right groups including the National Resistance also joined the call for the DSSS demonstration through their web pages. Such extremely unconstitutional activities and relationships were one of the reasons the Workers' Party was banned in the first place.
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Liška says these relationships were sufficient reason either to ban yesterday's gathering before it even began, or to disperse it once it had begun. The town hall leadership, however, did none of this. It permitted the radical right-wing march and did not disperse the gathering even after it took an illegal turn and Ondřej Liška filed criminal charges against the organizers at the local department of the Police of the Czech Republic. For their part, the police intervened very harshly against the group of Roma and other people counter-demonstrating against the neo-Nazis and attempting to block the extremist march.
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Let's look at the events in Nový Bydžov in chronological order. In addition to the right-wing radicals, Roma people and others also announced a gathering for 12 March and the "Nový Bydžov is not alone!" Initiative was created. This call was endorsed by NGOs including the Romea civic association, human rights activists, politicians, members of the Green Party, guests from abroad and other sympathizers.
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As many as 300 people total met in the town who were united in the opinion that a "protest against neo-Nazism and racism is a natural position to hold in society and the obligation of every respectable person". The recently appointed Czech Government Human Rights Commissioner, Monika Šimůnková, was also invited to attend.
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The Workers' Social Justice Party had planned to march through streets where many Roma families live, such as Na Šarlejích street, where the entire drama later culminated in a police intervention in which riot police, on horseback and carrying shields, dispersed the counter-demonstrators with nightsticks and firecrackers. The majority of Roma families in that locality, out of concern there would be a pogrom, had already sent their children, the elderly and the women out of town to stay with relatives. The tension in the town was so thick you could have cut it with a knife.
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On Saturday 12 March, police checkpoints were set up in the morning for those driving into Nový Bydžov. Police stopped the buses that the Green Party had organized for their supporters and the car being driven by former Czech Human Rights Minister Michael Kocáb. That morning some of the retailers in town had closed their shops and boarded up their display windows. There were only a few shops where visitors, including the skinheads, were welcome. The streets of the town of 7 000 were empty.
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Roma and other citizens supporting the Nový Bydžov is not alone! Initiative gathered for their march by the football pitch. Those in attendance included former Czech Human Rights Minister Michael Kocáb, the actor Achab Heidler, the chair of the Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust (Výbor pro odškodnění romského holocaustu) Čeněk Růžička, the German journalist and sociologist Markus Pape, members of the Green Party, members of the Czech Pirate Party, and many others.
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The organizers of the event, Miroslav Brož and Drahomír Radek Horváth, announced just before 11:00 that the planned march had been canceled and that there would be a religious gathering instead. Such a gathering would not be subject to reporting requirements, which meant the procession could travel anywhere it wanted.
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The group was led by a clergywoman from the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, Mgr. Michaela Kajlíková. She led the march into the center of town to the nearby Catholic church of St. Lawrence (sv. Vavřinec).
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After advancing 200 meters, the peaceful procession was stopped by police to verify whether it could be allowed to continue on as a religious gathering. Michaela Kajlíková began a common prayer, after which the marchers linked arms and created a human chain to symbolize their union and common resistance to evil. Negotiations with the secretary of the town hall took an hour, but were successful.
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At around noon the procession arrived at the church and started to pray. In the interim, the first small groups of right-wing radicals carrying DSSS flags began heading for the main square, which is near the church of St. Lawrence (sv. Vavřinec). Standing several meters away from the religious gathering, the neo-Nazis followed it and yelled insults at specific people. Police officers formed a barrier between those who were praying and the extremists.
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Shortly after noon, Michaela Kajlíková concluded the religious gathering, announced that fact to the town hall, and led the procession back to its original gathering place. Most of the demonstrators decided to stay in Na Šarlejích street, which is predominantly inhabited by Roma families, to blockade the extremists' march. Those who remained with the Roma included both former Human Rights Ministers and the chairs of the Green Party and the Pirate Party and their supporters. Radical representatives of the anti-fascist group Antifa joined the gathering as well.
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DSSS party chair Tomáš Vandas began speaking on the main square. Police asked the DSSS to change the route of their march so as to avoid Na Šarlejích street, which was being blocked by the counter-demonstrators. Vandas refused this request and insisted on the original route.
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The Roma counter-demonstrators were determined not to let the extremists march beneath the windows of their homes. One of the organizers, Drahomír Radek Horváth, declared he would remain there even at the price of committing civil disobedience.
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For almost one hour, the peaceful crowd created a blockade with their own bodies. "Black people, white people, join forces," chanted the group of roughly 200.
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The police anti-conflict teams attempted to convince the demonstrators to let the DSSS march through. A few steps away on the square, anti-Roma and racist slogans were being chanted which were criminal violations of the Constitution, so the people forming the blockade were willing to commit the misdemeanor of standing their ground.
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Green Party chair Ondřej Liška then announced to Mayor Pavel Louda that he had information according to which the illegal National Resistance movement was participating in the DSSS gathering, as was obvious from the content of their web page. In his view, this meant the DSSS gathering was unconstitutional as it was inciting racial intolerance and violence against a particular group. Liška asked the mayor to disperse the gathering. The mayor referred to the discipline of those participating in the permitted gathering on the square and said he saw nothing in the content of their speeches or the purpose of the march that would lead him to ban it. The Green Party head did not give up and set off to negotiate with the commander of the police intervention, Petr Krása.
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It seemed the commander of the intervention had more understanding for our arguments. He suggested filing official charges at the local police department. He told us that this would create an opportunity for dispersing the DSSS march, which had not yet left the square. Ondřej Liška, Michael Kocáb and Džamila Stehlíková immediately set off for the closest police department to file charges.
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Mere minutes after Liška and the two former ministers had entered the police building to file their motion to have the DSSS march dismissed, the police intervened in a flash against the counter-demonstrators and very harshly dispersed them. After calling once for those assembled to disperse, the police officers spurred their horses to a gallop and charged the demonstrators. Officers on horseback delivered blows to the demonstrators with long nightsticks.
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Riot police set off firecrackers and then randomly arrested the confused and startled counter-demonstrators. Eyewitnesses say the brutality and rapidity of the intervention confounded everyone. At least 10 demonstrators report having been struck with a night stick or an "encounter with a horse", as we might euphemistically describe the situation in which a rider charges at a person sitting on the ground who does not have enough time to get up and run. At least three people were treated for injuries caused by the horses.
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Those of us at the police station received word of this unexpectedly brutal intervention and immediately headed back to Na Šarlejích street. We were too late - the street was empty. The demonstrators had been pushed into the next street, Havlíčkova, to make room for the DSSS march. We managed to hand a copy of the charges to Petr Krása. He promised to see what could be done and disappeared in the direction of the square. We never saw him again.
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After several minutes, the streets leading away from the square were full of DSSS marchers chanting the slogans "Bohemia for the Czechs" and "Stop Black Racism". The march was protected by many riot police, far more than had protected the counter-demonstration march by the Roma and their supporters.
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The Mayor of Nový Bydžov later praised the course of the police interventions on the town hall website: "The Police of the Czech Republic demonstrated perfect preparedness and accompanied the march of the properly announced DSSS gathering. Thanks to a deployment of large numbers of men and equipment, public order was protected in the town during the gathering and immediately after it ended."
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Ondřej Liška and Drahomír Radek Horváth consider the police intervention to have been brutal and disproportionate. Horváth is preparing to file a motion for the intervention to be investigated.
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A sad ending to this Saturday was a clash during which 13 DSSS supporters attacked three Roma men. One of the Roma victims, after being kicked and receiving blows to the head, fell unconscious and was hospitalized with a concussion. DSSS chair Tomáš Vandas announced that he was satisfied with his party's action.
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"Special Education"

Czech Republic Still Segregating Schools
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For decades now the Eastern Bloc has used its public schools as a tool to economically and socially segregate Roma from the rest of society. By placing Rom children in "practical schools" for the mentally handicapped they deny the Romani population a chance at an education. The excuses provided range from the fact that a handful of Roma don't speak the same language, some Roma don't stay in school past elementary levels, and many aren't simply up to social standards. None of the excuses provided however prove that any of the Roma have a "mental handicap".
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The leading watchdog in Europe for human-rights, Thomas Hammarberg (the commissioner of the Council of Europe), publicly rebuked the Czech Republic this week for this exact reason. He states that if the Czech Republic does not move forward with integration of its Roma students than thousands of Roma will be sent to "special education" classes this September. And once again they will receive an education greatly inferior to their peers in the rest of the Czech public schools.
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Three years ago the European Court of Human Rights issued a judgement that condemned this behavior in any European country as being "discriminatory". This practice of segregation was thus ordered to be put to an end. And yet now three years later no real progress has been achieved in the Czech Republic. And no reasonable action has been taken by the European Union to see that this practice be stopped. Instead Roma children still remain 27 times more likely to be sent to "practical schools" for the mentally handicapped.
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To date the Czech government has received money to desegregate their schools and yet has spent absolutely nothing to do so. Around 10% of the money received from the EU to implement the National Action Plan for Inclusive Education has been spent on projects not related to the designated project. The remainder of the money has simply set idle and is now in danger of being handed back to the EU having spent absolutely nothing on the Romas' education.
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Actions actually taken by the Czech (right leaning) government on the issue have been quite the opposite of what the National Plan stated. The Czechs have instead dismantled any part of the Education Ministry that actually has attempted to implement the National Plan. All the while the EU has done nothing to stop the Czech government from setting up roadblocks to prevent the EU funds from working.
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So now the Czech's (nonbinding) National Plan is not expected to begin being implemented till at least late 2014. And even then that all depends on the given political climate and economic situations facing the Czech Republic. It is more likely that the liberals in the EU will loose interest and the Czech Republic will be allowed to sway even further toward its Nazi past.
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Source Documents for this Post.
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European Voice, Author James A. Goldston
http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/imported/another-intake-of-second-class-children/70520.aspx
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Prague Daily Monitor
http://praguemonitor.com/2011/03/09/european-centre-criticises-prague-over-romani-kids-education
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Romea.cz
http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2228
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Article From Romea.cz

Verdict tomorrow on attempted pogrom in Czech town after two and a half years of delay
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Tomorrow (Thursday 24 February 2011) the Regional Court in Ostrava should announce a first-instance verdict in the case of those accused of committing a targeted racist attack on randomly selected Roma people in two neighborhoods of the North Moravian town of Havířov. In 2009, the High Court in Olomouc decided the case could be qualified as attempted murder. The case was therefore removed from the docket of the District Court in Karviná and transferred to the Regional Court.
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Almost two and a half years have passed since the crime was committed, and the defendants have been at liberty during that time. The state prosecutor has charged eight young men with committing a racially motivated, targeted gang attack on Roma people in the neighborhoods of Šumbark and Prostřední Suchá in Havířov. One of the victims has suffered permanent damage to his health as a result of the attack. By law the trial will be closed, as one of the defendants was not yet 18 years old at the time of the crime. The announcement of the verdict, however, will be public.
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The prosecution charges that on the night of 8 November 2008, a large group of young men took to the streets of Havířov "as previously agreed and with the intention of attacking Roma passers-by." The youths, armed and masked, chased at least five young Roma men for the purpose of attacking them. In Šumbark, after a brief chase, they threw J. H., who was 16 years old at the time, to the ground, beat him and brutally kicked him, especially in the head, causing him serious life-threatening injuries. The assailants caused him intra-cranial injuries not only by kicking him, but by using a metal bar called a "gola" and a 65-cm long collapsible nightstick to beat him with. Police officers confiscated these assault weapons.
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After attacking J. H., the gang continued on their way, driving to Prostřední Suchá, another neighborhood of Havířov also predominantly inhabited by Roma people. Three carloads of assailants attempted to attack Roma people there as well. One victim managed to hide in a worker's dormitory, where migrant workers from Ukraine protected him.
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Eight defendants are now on trial for racially motivated attempted grievous bodily harm and for rioting. Prior to these assaults, police already had files on some of them as aggressive football hooligan supporters of the Baník Ostrava and Havířov clubs or as neo-Nazis. The High Court in Olomouc concluded that the perpetrators' behavior could be qualified as attempted murder and transferred the case to the Regional Court. The defendants remain at liberty due to significant delays in the criminal proceedings.
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The case for the prosecution rests primarily on circumstantial evidence. Police documented the defendants' mobile telephone signals as having been present at both sites at the times the attacks were committed. Even though the defendants have confirmed they were present at both places, they claim to have not participated in the attacks. When asked why they were present at the time of the crimes, they were unable to explain. Some eyewitnesses have refused to testify to either the police or the courts out of concerns for their own safety.
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In mid-October the presiding judge read into the record the testimony of eyewitnesses who had either failed to come to court or whose interrogation the judge considered necessary. A medical expert testified and confirmed that the main victim had been in danger of losing his life after the attack. He also described the victim's extensive injuries.
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The prosecutor's main problem is that the assailants riding in one of the three cars have never been identified by police. It is therefore theoretically possible that they were the ones who attacked J. H. and that the others only watched. However, it is a fact that all of the assailants continued to hunt more victims together after the attack on J. H., which would mean they were aware that what they were engaged in was highly violent and could lead to more attacks.
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If the court finds the defendants guilty, they face not only prison time, but will have to pay the victim damages in the hundreds of thousands of crowns. They will also have to reimburse his insurance for the costs of his medical treatment.
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Police are staying quiet about the case even today. The public has learned about it mainly thanks to the chair of the Roma association Europe Roma CZ, Ladislav Baláž, who visited the family of the main victim immediately after the attack and found a lawyer to represent them. Markus Pape has mapped the case and was the first to inform the public of it in detail. Daniela Horváthová, chair of the local branch of Europe Roma CZ in Prostřední Suchá, is communicating with the witnesses who have not yet testified out of fear for their own safety. News server Romea.cz is regularly reporting on the case.
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In mid-July 2009, the Anti-fascist Action group (Antifašistická akce- AFA) reported in detail on the overall activities of some of the defendants on the neo-Nazi scene. According to AFA, the defendants belong to a hooligans group called Thugs Havířov, and one of them is also said to be an active member of the militant group National Resistance (Národní odpor), which was banned by the Czech Supreme Court some years ago.
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In the past, violent neo-Nazi incursions against Roma people in Havířov were mainly committed in the Šumbark neighborhood. "Since news server Romea.cz and the other media started reporting on the trial, it has been calm," said Ladislav Baláž, who is monitoring the situation.
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The trial will start on 24 February 2011 at 8:30 AM CET at the Regional Court in Ostrava, Havlíčkovo nábřeží 1835/34. The main victim is being represented by Mgr. Roman Krakovka of the Law Office of Miketa and Partners with the financial support of the ROMEA association.
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To see this article on its original site, Romea.cz, visit this site.
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2186
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