Archive: Society | Human rights Human rights
As temperatures drop, a Brno restaurant owner proposes aid scheme to get more food to the homeless
The recent bout of freezing cold weather, with temperatures dropping to
minus fifteen degrees at night, has highlighted the plight of the
country’s homeless. Shelters are bursting at the seams, and charity
organizations are handing out hot soup and tea to help warm those
unfortunate enough to have to spend their days – and sometimes nights -
on a park bench. Now one restaurant owner has come up with a proposal that
might make a difference.
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PM expresses regret over Roma sterilization but activists say practice continues
Human rights campaigners won an important moral victory on Monday when the
government of Jan Fischer expressed regret over the forced sterilization of
women, almost all of them members of the country’s Roma minority. No
reliable figures exist for the numbers of women sterilized, but what’s
alarming is that according to human rights groups, the practice continues
in isolated cases to this day.
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New photography exhibition documents final years of communism
Rundown buildings, empty shop-windows and ever-present grayness –
that’s the focus of a new photography exhibition called ‘Tady bylo
Husákovo’ – ‘This Once Was Husák’s Country’, which is now on
display at Prague’s Louvre Gallery. The collection of photographs by
Lubomír Kotek documents the atmosphere of Prague streets in the years
preceding the Velvet Revolution. More
Czech charities take part in rescue efforts in Sumatra
Humanitarian workers from around the world are rushing to Western Sumatra
where Wednesday’s earthquake has left over a thousand people dead and
likely several thousand more trapped beneath the rubble. Among those
involved in the relief effort are Czech charity workers based in Aceh,
northern Sumatra, where they have been working throughout the numerous
disasters that have afflicted the island since 2005.
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Police clash with squatters highlights problem of abandoned buildings
A high profile Prague clash between squatters and their supporters and
police has highlighted the number of empty and deteriorating buildings in
the capital. It has also put the spotlight on the powerlessness of local
councils and authorities to force reluctant owners to take action.
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NGOs call for action in the face of persisting discrimination of Romany children in schools
Two years after a breakthrough verdict by the European Court for Human
Rights which denounced racial segregation in Czech schools, Romany children
still face widespread discrimination. That’s the conclusion of a group of
Czech NGOs that say the Czech Education Ministry has shown good will but
has introduced few practical measures to improve the situation.
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Paper claims foreigners could be working as virtual slaves in Czech Republic
Could tens of thousands of foreign migrants be working in almost slave-like
conditions in the Czech Republic? That’s the conclusion of an in-depth
investigation by the newspaper Lidové Noviny, which features the story on
its front page today. The paper says the global financial crisis has made
it even easier for unscrupulous “agencies” to exploit thousands of
workers from countries such as Ukraine, Mongolia and Vietnam – using
coercion and even physical violence to enslave their victims, many of whom
are deeply in debt to their traffickers. We spoke to Irena Konečná,
co-ordinator of La Strada Czech Republic, which deals with the problem.
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People in Need at work in the Congo, part II
Writers often call just about any country a “land of striking
contrasts”. In the Eastern Congo the main, inescapable contrast is that
of joy and grief. As we arrived in the town of Bunyakiri a noisy
procession
was celebrating the birth of a child, while not far off, in a makeshift
classroom on the other side of town, 26 health workers are being trained
under the auspices of the Czech charity People in Need to deal with the
gravest of tasks. More
People in Need at work in the Congo, part I
Czechs are working in crisis spots around the globe, predominantly through
the charity foundation People in Need. Some of the people most truly in
need of that aid are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whose
eastern
conflict was largely unknown in the Czech Republic until a few people who
thought they could help came in and started doing so. More
Flash floods take heavy toll
Clean-up operations are underway in the southern and eastern parts of the
Czech Republic where 62 towns and villages were hit by heavy floods in the
past few days. Although water levels are now receding around the country,
the danger is far from over with meteorologists predicting more heavy rain
into the week.
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