Tag Archives: Segregation

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

School Segregation in Czechia

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In the Czech Republic, there are still 130 segregated schools where Roma make up at least a third of the students. Veronika Hlaváčová’s documentary brings the experiences of Roma whose children ended up in such classes and points to the vast differences in the quality of education.

“Normally, the teacher leaves us there and goes to the office because she has her child there. Completely disinterested,” describes Zdeněk in the documentary. He attends the eighth grade along with 14 other Roma. “We come to school, the teacher comes, we have mathematics and he tells us, for example, to write something down and we do whatever we want for the rest of the lesson,” he adds.

 

News Eastern Europe Slovenia

Slovenia: An accord

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In the town of Ribnica, in Southeastern Slovenia, Roma organizations and the management of the municipality met at a joint meeting. Among other things, they agreed that the municipality will provide drinking water to two settlements when the residents there meet a set of requirements. The municipality requires that Roma, among other things, be get involved in the integration process, send their children to school regularly, clean up the settlement and determine land boundaries.

In brief: So that the municipality provides a service that is due to all its residents, Roma have to fulfil some criteria. Especially the integration one, how will they measure that?

News Eastern Europe Slovenia

Slovenia: Civil Initiative

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Since in their views, the state’s measures in the field of solving the Roma problem have been unsuccessful, the Regional Civil Initiative for solving the Roma problem demands that the government invite them to a meeting within a month. “We want to check whether they will accept the proposals formulated by the 11 mayors of the southeast region,” explained Silva Mesojedec: “If the government does not accept us, we will no longer prevent the creation of village guards and other forms of organizing residents.”

The proposal was refused on the grounds that it singled out a minority, i.e. was not conform to the constitution.

News Eastern Europe Slovenia

Slovenia: A More Differentiated View

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A much more differentiated article about the issues with Roma in Slovenia. It says that after thirty years of deliberate neglect of the minority, politics will now finally agree that something must be done. What the consensus now is, unfortunately is, is to limit and deprive the Roma of social rights, to make life even more difficult in general, and even to adopt stricter criminal legislation especially for them.

News Eastern Europe Slovenia

Slovenia: Lone Voice

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A lone voice in Slovenia setting context about the Roma “problem”. She states that a summer without particularly prominent problems with illegal migrants brought political activation at the expense of problems with another convenient group, the Roma, who, unlike the first, are considered some kind of imaginary “internal enemies”.

In brief, once is creating some scapegoats based on effective petty criminality, whose causes (exclusion and racism) are totally excluded.

Dangerous.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Reaction to the Slovak Experiment

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A Slovak MP, Ingrid Kosova criticizes the project of the Ministry of Education to teach Roma children in Romanes. She says that up to 65 percent of Roma children encounter segregation during education. They do not encounter other children, they lose the opportunity to escape from the environment of generational poverty. It is not just a historical, cultural or economic question. It is first and foremost a deeply moral question. The consequences of segregation in schools are humiliating and dehumanizing. First of all, politicians can change it. However, they are failing miserably, and the result is that, according to the data of the European Union, Slovakia is the worst in terms of segregation among the member states. And the situation continues to worsen.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Slovakia and Roma Education

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The Slovak Ministry of Education launched a pilot project where Roma children are taught in Romanes. This is a scandal and cementing the segregation of Roma in school. It certainly will not help integration.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Slovakia and Roma

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After a recent visit to Slovakia, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Michael O’Flaherty called on the Slovak authorities to urgently address the “terrible living conditions” of thousands of Roma. In the east of Slovakia, he visited Stará Tehelňa in Prešov, Jarovnice, Petrovany, Luník IX in Košice and Kecerovce, where he met with representatives of Roma communities, local authorities and groups working with Roma.

“Prejudice against Roma is deeply rooted in society. Discrimination affects all areas of Roma life in Slovakia: from placing Roma women in separate maternity wards to segregated Roma children in education. Many Roma are deprived of access to adequate housing and are rejected in job interviews, ” he stated.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Roma and Czech Schools

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A dreadful reportage in a segregated school in the Czech Republic. Karel Rajchl, the director of the Vojanova Elementary School in Děčín says that getting children and their families to cooperate is often almost impossible.

“Shh, they’re writing a test,” she warns, upon entering the seventh-grade physics class. The teacher replies “It doesn’t matter, they can’t do anything anyway”. In the last pews, two boys don’t even bother to have an open notebook in which to calculate the task entered on the blackboard, they just giggle. “These boys are one step away from raping our young female teachers,” states principal Rajchl dryly as he leaves the class again.

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Bosnia and Exclusion

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Around 400 Roma live in Mostar. Excluded from a very young age due to lack of support from the education system and the government, they suffer discrimination and prejudice. A double punishment for these citizens who fight every day for their inclusion.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Czechia and Roma

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According to social worker Jiřina Somsiová, the vast majority of the Roma are socially excluded in the Olomouc Region. Only the lucky few, who came to the Czech Republic immediately after the war, live in their own appartments. Those who immigrated later, typically from Slovakia, have no chance to find or rent normal housing and are therefore dependent on overcrowded hostels. Jiřina Somsiová, a field social worker with thirty years of experience is also the co-founder of the Community of Roma in Moravia.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Schools and Roma

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An interesting article about integration of Roma in Slovak schools. Most non-Roma parents would prefer Roma to be in segregated schools. This is precisely what the recent research of the Centre for Environmental and Ethical Education Živica and the non-profit organization Teach, co-financed by the EU, addressed. He revealed some interesting things, namely that the majority of the public have no problem with their children going to class with a child from socially excluded communities. However, they are convinced that it would be best for Roma children to be educated in separate classes or even schools.

For as long as this attitude prevails, it will be difficult to de-segregate schools.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Amnesty on Czechia

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Amnesty criticised the Czech Republic for the discrimination faced by Ukrainians and for the school segregation for Roma. The latter has not improved over the last 20 years.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Slovakia and Marginalised Roma Communities

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An editorial on the disastrous conditions faced by some segregated Roma settlements in Slovakia. The author cites that it is totally unacceptable that people live in conditions of the 15th (sic!) century. He also states that nothing has been done in the last 20 years, and that segregated education is not acceptable either.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Pre-kindergarten in Ostrava

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A class for Roma children recently opened in Ostrava. Its goal is to make it easier for them to start kindergarten. According to the Ostrava organization Vzájemne sožižití, up to a quarter of Roma children do not go to kindergartens. Therefore, in one of the local community centres, they started operating a product called Brouček, which children can go to before starting kindergarten.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

On a Segregated School

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The local school in Předlice in Ústí has been purely Romani for two decades. What is scary is what the headmaster says. He says the greatest achievement are when one on the school pupils graduate from high school. He adds this year there is one, next year there will be another one.

Is that an achievement or the sign of an under-performing school?

Bulgaria News Eastern Europe

Bulgaria, Schools, and Roma

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Segregated schools still exist in Bulgaria. In Germany, Roma children learn German in 6 months. In Bulgaria, they are forbidden to speak Romanes, and they do not know Bulgarian.

“Do you know how difficult it is to be a Rom in Bulgaria? A Bulgarian child doesn’t want to sit next to you at school. I’m still afraid if someone will want to sit next to me”  says Assoc. Prof. Yosif Nunev from the University of Veliko Tarnovo. He remembers the discussions about Roma inclusion 20 years ago – the only difference now is that the “politicians and the political” are different. “In 40 years, they learned 20-30 new terms. However, the attitude of the Bulgarians has not changed at all, it has even become more critical in some places,” says his colleague Hristo Kyuchukov, professor of intercultural education. Both are adamant that until segregated schools are abolished, nothing different will happen in the next 20 years.

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