Romanies call for nation-wide rallies to condemn racist attacks on their community
The Czech Republic’s Romany community is outraged by the recent arson attack on one of its members which left a two-year-old girl fighting for her life and rendered eight people homeless overnight. Several Romany organizations have called on the authorities to stand up to growing extremism in the country, and are planning a nationwide protest to step up public opposition to the neo-Nazi movement.
The protests will take place at the same time on Sunday, May 3, in all the big cities and a number of other locations. The organizers are calling on all who condemn the recent attack to join in and they have also started a money collection for the victims who have been left without a roof over their heads. But Mr Veselý says that if the authorities are serious about cracking down on extremists, they have to get down to business.
“The police, or the Ministry of Interior, have not put enough effective effort in the fight against extremism in the Czech Republic. You will find many mistakes which the interior minister made in the case of the Workers’ Party, a neo-Nazi group here in the Czech Republic.”But better police work and a stricter approach to neo-Nazis alone is not likely to solve the problem. A study by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, which was released on Wednesday, shows that the discrimination of Romanies in the Czech Republic is more widespread than in any other EU country. Two thirds of Czech Romanies said they had been subjected to some form of discrimination in the past 12 months, while 83 percent of them feel that they do not have equal opportunities when it comes to getting an education, finding work, getting medical attention, being served in a restaurant or getting a bank loan. This is possibly the main reason for the dramatic, nearly 1,000 percent surge in the number of Czech Romany asylum claimants in Canada in the last two months. The planned nation-wide rally will show how much support from the majority population Czech Romanies can hope for.