Category Archives: Czech Republic

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Trio Romano

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Trio Romano

The Roma band Trio Romano, which has been appearing regularly at the Balkan Fiesta for several years, will perform again this year – this time at the tenth anniversary edition of this event. The Fiesta will take place on Saturday, April 26, 2025, from 8:00 PM at Café Nona on Národní třída in Prague. It will also be the last year under the roof of the New Stage of the National Theatre.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Having a Dream

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Having a Dream

The second year of the Having a Dream project will take place on May 3, 2025 in Pardubice. Nine inspiring Roma personalities, including three ROMEA scholarship holders, will perform on stage. The aim of the event is to support education, personal development and intergenerational dialogue. The event is held under the auspices of the Deputy Governor of the Pardubice Region, Pavel Šotola, and the Government Commissioner for Roma Minority Affairs, Lucie Fuková. Visitors can look forward to panel discussions, workshops, cultural performances and a ceremonial procession through the city centre.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Lety: Memorial Service

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Lety: Memorial Service

On Sunday, May 11, 2025, a memorial service will be held at the Roma and Sinti Holocaust Memorial to honor the victims of the Nazi regime. The event is organized by the Roma Holocaust Compensation Committee under the auspices of the government commissioner Lucie Fuková.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe Romania

Book

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Book

Soldiers. A Story from Ferentari  was only published in Czech this year. It tells the autobiographical story of a famous anthropologist Adrian, who is writing a dissertation on Romani music and moves into the Bucharest ghetto of Ferentari. There, former Romani prisoner Alberto becomes his guide, and the mismatched pair eventually becomes a couple facing the surprising twists and turns of an unexpected intimate relationship.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Brno: Exhibition

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Brno: Exhibition

The new exhibition “Roma Rising” at the Brno Museum of Roma Culture is intended to be the antithesis of the traditional ideas about Roma. It presents a total of 60 black-and-white portraits of prominent Roma men and women from 13 European countries and Canada. They have been on display since the middle of last week.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe Slovakia

School Segregation

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School Segregation

On February 28, 2025, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) issued a fundamental judgment that affects the lives of thousands of Roma children in Central Europe – and especially all of us who are trying to ensure that our children have a chance at a decent education. In the case of Salay vs. Slovakia, the court ruled in favour of a young Roma man who was unfairly placed in a special school for children with mental disabilities as a child, even though there was no reason for this.

All too common still.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Brno: “Problematic” school

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Brno: “Problematic” school

It used to be an elite institution where no Roma students attended. However, after merging with a neighboring elementary school, Merhautova Elementary School became a school where most of the students are Roma and, in recent years, Ukrainian. Does this sound like a recipe for disaster? But that did not happen at the Brno elementary school. Children and parents expressed their opinion in a satisfaction survey that “Merhautka” has the best internal climate of all Brno schools.

The proof that integration works.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Prague: Concert

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Prague: Concert

Roma music from all over the world in one place at La Fabrika – real Roma cymbalum, authentic flamenco and for the first time ever, Roma artists from Greece. The Traditional Roma Music Concert will feature Lavutari di Praga, Kostas Pavlidis and Ballet Flamenco Sergio González. The concert will take plae on the 29th of May 2025.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Brno: Scam

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Brno: Scam

A woman in her 40s approached an 80 years old man saying that she was from a Roma association helping seniors and offered to help him withdraw money. He agreed but she then took the envelope with 30,000 crowns from him and left. The police are looking for her.

This is bad for all.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

School Segregation in the Czech Republic

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School Segregation in the Czech Republic

The paradox of today’s Czech Republic is that a country that aspired to connect with the liberal West after the fall of communism, tolerates a system of educational segregation that would put to shame even the illiberal regimes it once condemned. According to PAQ Research, there are 130 schools in the Czech Republic that are de facto “only for Roma”, where Roma children make up more than a third of the students. There are still 130 segregated schools in the Czech Republic. A third of Roma children end up in them.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Czechia and Elections

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Czechia and Elections

In the Ušti nad Labem region, in the last parliamentary elections, many Roma preferred Andrej Babiš (ANO). Now, after many years, they have their own candidate, who, thanks to the communists, can get into the Chamber of Deputies. “Kateřina Konečná gives us a historic chance, but Roma voters must help me,” says 44-year-old Marco Cavali and thanks the KSČM chairwoman for the opportunity, who confirmed him as the electoral three on the Stačilo! candidate list in the Ústí nad Labem region. However, Cavali has been insolvent since 2022, but he does not consider financial problems an obstacle to electoral success.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Czechia: School Segregation

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Czechia: School Segregation

The segregation of Roma children in education in the Czech Republic continues. There are still more than 130 segregated schools, of which in 78 of them Roma children make up more than half of the pupils, according to a PAQ Research study based on estimates from the Ministry of Education. Segregated schools are located in most regions and the situation has not changed significantly in the last decade.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Charter 77 Award

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Charter 77 Award

The František Kriegl Award of the Czech Charter 77 Foundation for Civic Courage was awarded this year to Romani activist and social worker Elena Gorolová. The jury honoured her for her personal and professional contribution to the fight for compensation for victims of illegal and secret sterilizations. It particularly highlighted her long-term efforts and the courage with which she raised the topic, as well as her subsequent fight for compensation for victims of illegal actions by state healthcare facilities.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Czechoslovakia: Sterilisations

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Czechoslovakia: Sterilisations

It is estimated that thousands of women of Roma origin were sterilized in Czechoslovakia since the early 1970s. They had to wait decades for compensation.

In the Czechoslovak environment, forced sterilizations often took place in delivery rooms, at the moments of greatest vulnerability of women, during cesarean section births. Women in pain and under pressure from medical personnel were unable to give truly informed consent. The decree on sterilizations was repealed in 1993, but unfortunately isolated and illegal cases continued to occur. The last verified case of involuntary sterilization in the Czech Republic dates back only eleven years, to 2007. As Kateřina Čapková from the Institute of Contemporary History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic emphasizes: “Forced sterilizations as a scientific topic seem to me to be important to study mainly in international contexts as a phenomenon that appears in states with different, and one could even say contradictory, ideologies.” The Prague Forum for Roma History therefore plans to support deeper research into this area that has so far been insufficiently researched.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

LGBT+ Roma

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LGBT+ Roma

David Tišer is a well-known Czech Roma activist. He is the director of the Ara Art organization, which also supports LGBT+ people among the Roma. In his interview, he was asked why some Roma consider queer people ritually unclean and why coming out among Roma can be even harder than in mainstream society.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Czechia: Education, Art, and Roma

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Czechia: Education, Art, and Roma

What is the power of words, culture and art in creating a feeling that one belongs somewhere and can be proud of oneself? This is a question that concerns not only minorities in Czech schools. The way to do this can be social support from the environment and art. For Roma students, it is offered, for example, by the Ara Art organization, which is dedicated to activist culture, or the Kher publishing house, which publishes children’s books on Roma themes. How to ensure that children’s talent and potential do not go to waste?

Roma children make up roughly three percent of all students in Czech schools. However, they are not enrolled evenly. According to PAQ Research data, in 2023 there were approximately 130 segregated schools where Roma made up at least a third of the students.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Czechia and the International Roma Day

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Czechia and the International Roma Day

An article about April 8th, stressing its origins to the historic congress in Orpington, near London, UK, which took place from April 7 to 12, 1971, laying the foundations for international Roma cooperation and bringing symbols of Roma identity.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Liberec: Vandals

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Liberec: Vandals

A vandal damaged a memorial of Roma children from the Czech city of Liberec who were murdered during the Holocaust. The memorial was only erected a year agao.

Shame!

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Prague: International Roma Day

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Prague: International Roma Day

During the Saturday concert at the Prague Jazz Dock, on the occasion of the celebrations of the International Roma Day, the singer, actress and presenter Alžbeta Ferencová, known by her stage name Zea, performed. In an exclusive interview for the first Roma internet television, ROMEA TV, she shared her impressions of the concert and her personal relationship to the celebrations of the Roma identity.

During the evening, Zea sang her own compositions as well as traditional Roma songs that have a deeper meaning for her. She sings in English, Slovak and Romani – each language has a different charm for her. “The most natural thing for me is to sing in English. But with Slovak and Romani, I see that people understand it more, it is more personal,” said the artist. However, she admits that writing lyrics in Slovak gives her more work: “I want the text to have a nice meaning, I don’t want anything quick and easy. I am not that good a lyricist, I have to admit that.”

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Czechia: Workshop on Inclusion

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Czechia: Workshop on Inclusion

The council of Europe organised a workshop on inclusive education for Roma children in the Czech Republic. Nice, but right now, the issue is more the segregation that still revails in aschools in the country.

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