Research released earlier this month by the Slovo 21 civic association on the position of Romani women in the Czech Republic found that most Romani women consider their children’s education to be very important. More than 600 Romani women were surveyed by the project.
The research endeavors to refute stereotypical notions about Romani people, specifically Romani women, on the basis of data. „The opinion prevails in the Czech Republic that Romani women do not want to educate themselves and work, that they have many children, and that they believe it is not important that their descendants receive a quality education. There was no relevant data to either confirm or deny such claims, which is why we decided to research the actual position of these women in Czech society and in the Romani community and reveal the challenges they face daily,“ the introduction to the study’s final report says.
The analysis of the survey findings was performed by an expert team at the Faculty of Humanities at Charles University in Prague. It shows that Romani women in the Czech Republic want to become educated, want to work, and want quality education for their children. Continue reading Czech NGO releases exclusive survey by and about Romani women
Category Archives: Posts in English
Vienna names square after Romani celebrity
Earlier this month a square in the Viennese quarter of Neubau was named after one of its celebrated, recently deceased residents, Ceija Stojka. A Romani woman, Ms Stojka survived three concentration camps, lived a travelling lifestyle for years after the war, and made her living as a carpet seller.
At the end of the 1980s she published her autobiography, called We Live in Seclusion – Memories of a Romni, which was published in Czech translation 20 years later by the Romano daniben association in collaboration with the Argo publishing house. In time she became a famous author and painter and was eventually granted an honorary professorship by a government minister.
As part of the „ordination“ of the square, a celebration was held in front of the chruch where Ms Stojka had regularly attended mass. Her relatives read from her books and played Romani songs, while the children in attendance were able to make masks if they felt like it. Continue reading Vienna names square after Romani celebrity
Roma woman flees racial attacks in Czech Republic, becomes UK police officer
In Czech society, stereotypes usually put ethnic Roma on the wrong side of the law. In Great Britain, Romani people are offered unsuspected opportunities, and so it is that Dana Ghosh, a Romani woman from the Czech Republic, is in her police uniform for the first time today.
In the English town of Peterborough, Ghosh is expected to mainly serve the large Romani community. Czech Radio reports that her ethnic origin was not important at all when she applied for the prestigious job.
„I liked the idea. I thought about it a lot and ultimately I decided to go for it. The whole process lasted about five months. I learned I got the job a couple of weeks ago. I’m enthusiastic about it,“ says Ghosh, who is originally from the town of Opava.
Ghosh, who is now a mother of two, left the Czech Republic with her parents and siblings because of racial attacks in 1998 and relocated to Britain. Now the delicate, elegant young woman in her third year of college has become a community police officer.
„I didn’t say I was a Romani woman during the interview, but I remembered that I speak Romani fluently,“ Ghosh says. Reportedly no one even asked about her ethnic origin.
„I can imagine being useful in that field. I definitely will do my best to help the community and people here as much as possible. Probably the most troubled area, in my opinion, will be Pakistani and Romani relations,“ she says.
Another Peterborough police officer of Romani origin from the Czech Republic, a man, is already working in that area. „I am looking forward to having a colleague here who will be able to shoulder part of my obligations and my work. I will support her however I can so that everyone in the community knows who she is. I believe she really has great potential to change the way the community runs, for people to trust her,“ says officer Petr Torák (pictured above).
„For Dana this is really a chance to become a role model, not just for the Romani community, but generally for the members of all national minorities. When a police officer is directly a member of the community she serves, there’s no language barrier, that’s a big victory,“ says experienced police officer Jim Davies, who also chairs the Gypsy Roma Traveller Police Association.
Source: Romea.cz
Date: 29.09.2014
Roma Holocaust Survivor attacked by French National Police
In the afternoon of 23 September 2014, the local French Police of Arpajon, a little municipality of 10.000 habitants in the region of Ile de France, decided to have a search in the property of Raymond Gureme, a French Roma Holocaust Survivor 89 years old. When the police started the search in the house, Raymond asked the police to show the search warrant, but the police answered “… we are not in the USA here, we don’t need it!”, according to a testimony present during the search. Afterwards, the police forced to enter the house but Raymond opposed it and he was badly beaten by a policeman who is about 30 years old. Two of Raymond Gureme’s sons tried to defend him and were arrested by the police for „rebellion“ and „death threats“. Raymond has marks all over his legs and arms and he was visited by a doctor in order to make a formal complaint. When Raymond’s relatives asked in the Police stations the reasons behind the search, they didn’t received any clear answers. At the moment Raymond has to face his aggressors in a tribunal were his sons are judged. Continue reading Roma Holocaust Survivor attacked by French National Police
Sinti and Roma inspire ‚hostility‘ in German population, study reveals
A recent study shows that one in three Germans rejects Sinti and Roma as neighbours, revealing “deeply rooted stereotypes“. EurActiv Germany reports.
Results of a recent survey show ignorance and prejudice against Sinti and Roma remain widespread within the German population.
The comprehensive study, „Popular opinions regarding Sinti and Roma“ was presented Wednesday (3 September) by the German Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency (ADS) .
Researchers analysed stereotypes related to Europe’s largest minority and existing knowledge about the group, providing recommendations for dismantling discrimination.
Compared to other minorities, Sinti and Roma are met with the least amount of sympathy, the study showed. One in two respondents said they believed Sinti and Roma inspired hostility, because of their behaviour.
„Indifference, ignorance and rejection create a fatal combination, that paves the way for discrimination of Sinti and Roma,“ ADS director Christine Lüders said at the presentation of the study.
A considerable portion of the German population does not regard Sinti and Roma as equal fellow citizens, she explained.
The findings are dramatic, Lüders said, demanding substantial action from both a political and societal standpoint.
Romani Rose, the chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, voiced his concern over the deeply rooted stereotypes revealed by the study: „Against their better judgement, key policy makers exploit the concept of Roma as an enemy in the poverty migration debate, thus instrumentalising widespread anti-Ziganism,“ Rose said.
In a joint proposal for action, ADS and the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma called for regular surveys on discrimination experiences among Sinti and Roma.
The construction of an educational academy for Sinti and Roma is also important, the two groups said, as well as greater efforts by self-organised bodies to participate in state agreements.
Additional initiatives proposed by the groups included representation on broadcasting councils and better protection measures combating discrimination by administrative authorities and the police.
Source: Euractive
Date: 04.09.2014
Sinti and Roma inspire ‚hostility‘ in German population, study reveals
A recent study shows that one in three Germans rejects Sinti and Roma as neighbours, revealing “deeply rooted stereotypes“. EurActiv Germany reports.
Results of a recent survey show ignorance and prejudice against Sinti and Roma remain widespread within the German population.
The comprehensive study, „Popular opinions regarding Sinti and Roma“ was presented Wednesday (3 September) by the German Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency (ADS) .
Researchers analysed stereotypes related to Europe’s largest minority and existing knowledge about the group, providing recommendations for dismantling discrimination.
Compared to other minorities, Sinti and Roma are met with the least amount of sympathy, the study showed. One in two respondents said they believed Sinti and Roma inspired hostility, because of their behaviour.
„Indifference, ignorance and rejection create a fatal combination, that paves the way for discrimination of Sinti and Roma,“ ADS director Christine Lüders said at the presentation of the study.
A considerable portion of the German population does not regard Sinti and Roma as equal fellow citizens, she explained.
The findings are dramatic, Lüders said, demanding substantial action from both a political and societal standpoint.
Romani Rose, the chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, voiced his concern over the deeply rooted stereotypes revealed by the study: „Against their better judgement, key policy makers exploit the concept of Roma as an enemy in the poverty migration debate, thus instrumentalising widespread anti-Ziganism,“ Rose said.
In a joint proposal for action, ADS and the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma called for regular surveys on discrimination experiences among Sinti and Roma.
The construction of an educational academy for Sinti and Roma is also important, the two groups said, as well as greater efforts by self-organised bodies to participate in state agreements.
Additional initiatives proposed by the groups included representation on broadcasting councils and better protection measures combating discrimination by administrative authorities and the police.
Source: Euractive
Date: 04.09.2014
Report: Roma in ‚poorer health‘ condition than average
While it has often been proven that Roma experience extensive discrimination, violence and social exclusion, a new report financed by the European Commission also reveals that this has an overall negative impact on their health.
The Roma Health Report calls on international agencies as well as governments to take action to protect the health and well-being of Roma people.
The study covers the 28 EU countries as well as Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland, with a deeper focus on countries with larger (migrant) Roma populations, such as Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and the UK.
The Commission says Roma communities in Europe suffer from discrimination and consequently face barriers accessing good quality housing, health care and education.
In a survey, one third of Roma respondents aged 35 to 54 say health problems are limiting their daily activities. While around 20% of Roma respondents are not covered by medical insurance, 66% say they would not be able to afford prescription drugs.
The report also states that there is consistent evidence demonstrating that the Roma population has considerably shorter life expectancy compared to the non-Roma population. For example in Austria, regional estimates suggest the mortality rate for Roma at regional level is 14% higher than for the rest of the country. Higher rates of infant mortality among Roma have also been observed in Bulgaria, Slovakia, Hungary, and in the Czech Republic.
While no country systematically reports comprehensive data of Roma health status, evidence indicates that Roma in Bulgaria are particularly vulnerable to outbreaks of measles and hepatitis A, B, and C. Rates of HIV infection have been evidenced amongst the most socially excluded Roma, such as prisoners, drug addicts and prostitutes.
In 2009, an outbreak of measles in Bulgaria revealed that 89.3% of the 24,047 persons affected were of Roma origin, and 22 out of the 24 deaths were Roma patients.
„Roma populations in Europe are in poorer health than non-Roma populations,“ the Commission stated in the report. „But while sufficient data on Roma exists to evidence social and economic exclusion, and poor health, there are still vast gaps in Roma health status data which impede any full understanding of the situation,“ it said.
Source: Euractive
Date: 09.09.2014
Who Defines Roma?
Roma identity as we know it today wouldn’t exist without the discourse created by numerous experts. The World Bank, for example, has published widely on Roma poverty, others have written on the genetics of Roma. The production of knowledge about Roma presents a curious consensus on who the Roma are and typically reinforces stereotypes. Consequently, Roma identity tends to be recognized by the strength of the stereotypes related to it.
Roma have been subjected to a variety of scientific practices such as counting, classifying, demographic predictions, mapping, photographing, and DNA profiling. All these practices are part and parcel of a trained vision that itself needs to be observed.
Many stereotypes are created by outsiders, of which the academic establishment is just a part, and then internalized and reproduced by Roma themselves. Policy analysis chiefly produces and circulates a standard image of Roma as a group of marginal and vulnerable people, if not at-risk or welfare-dependent. In doing so, policy analysts and policy makers—as well as academics and journalists—create and maintain negative definitions of Roma.
At the visual level, Roma identity is standardized even more powerfully than in the texts: images of Roma are abundant in stereotypes (the beggar, the naked children on the garbage dump, the shantytown resident, the displaced, the poor migrant) which narrow public perceptions. Not that these photographic instances aren’t part of reality, but emphasizing only this aspect perpetuates a deeply negative vision of Roma.
The interest in describing and representing Roma is both scientific and political: science presumes to represent Roma as a research object by constituting Roma group identity through its various disciplinary branches, while political entrepreneurs bolster their agendas by instrumentalizing Roma as a political object. Scientific or expert interests are at the same time epistemic but also mundane and profitable—but not for those categorized. Who would support research on Roma that doesn’t fit with predetermined profiles prepared by bureaucrats or policy makers?
The homogenous image of Roma presented by researchers is inaccurate because it is incomplete. On the one hand, not all individuals judged by the researchers as being Roma think of themselves as such. On the other hand, the problems that are believed to apply exclusively to Roma are not relevant for all of them and, moreover, are also applicable to many non-Roma.
Thus, perhaps the best way to understand the Roma “issue” is not to analyze the Roma (as ethnic identity is contextual and fluid) but to look at their various classifiers and modes of objectification. That the category of Roma is politically institutionalized through the contribution of the expert knowledge is easily observable with the political regime change from socialism to capitalism in Central and Eastern Europe. Before 1990, Roma were not part of the official and expert discourse; afterwards they became the main focus of the political and scientific scrutiny.
The scientific and expert “truth” established by Roma-related research is one that is conjectural, interested, and highly dependent on the political regimes in power. The way in which experts classify people (including Roma) can have important consequences for those who are classified. The expert and scientific images of Roma do nothing but exacerbate more the existing social divisions by lending academic credibility to incorrect and dangerous perceptions that Roma are somehow fundamentally different to everyone else.
In my forthcoming book Expert Trademarks: Scientific and Policy Practices of Roma Classification (CEU Press), I aim to draw attention away from the Roma themselves and toward those who classify them and how.
Acknowledging the implications of scientific categorization for people’s lives was the most significant reason for me to write this book. The negative image of Roma has to be analyzed, challenged, and deconstructed. It’s time for experts to show more prudence in their assumptions, descriptions, and methodologies, and to begin to depoliticize Roma ethnicity.
Source: Open Society Foundation
Date: 08.05.2014
Czech hospitals refuse medical records to women sterilized against their will
Several hospitals in the Czech Republic are reportedly refusing to give women who were sterilized in their facilities without their informed consent the medical records of those procedures. In some cases records are said to no longer exist because they were destroyed during recent floods.
The Czech daily Lidové noviny (LN) reports that these women evidently will not have the opportunity to request compensation for these harms without their records. News server MedicalTribune.cz has reprinted an excerpt from the LN article online.
The article tells the story of a 55-year-old woman named Lenka who lives in Prague and gave birth in a hospital there during the 1980s. Doctors decided to perform a Caesarean section, and after the baby was delivered, they sterilized her.
She did not learn that she had been sterilized until she came out of the anaesthesia. The doctors never consulted the surgery with her.
Not only did Lenka lose the chance of becoming pregnant again, her marriage fell apart as a result. Despite this, she evidently will not have the opportunity to request the compensation that victims of such unwanted sterilizations are to be awarded by a new law now being drafted by the Czech Human Rights Ministry together with the Czech Helsinki Committee.
„U Apolináře Hospital told me they lost my medical records during the floods in 2002,“ says Lenka, a college-educated woman who has decided to go public about what happened to her to show that the victims of such unwanted sterilizations were not only from the Romani community. Some hospitals are reportedly also refusing to provide the necessary medical records to their former patients.
„The hospital claimed to me that the relevant records had already been destroyed. They said they destroy them every 10 years. I went there a second time, I argued with them, and in the end they found them and gave them to me,“ says Olga Kováčiková, another victim of such treatment.
Hospitals in the Czech Republic must store medical records for at least 40 years following a patient’s most recent hospitalization or 10 years after a patient’s death. „Some hospitals are deterring patients from acquiring their medical records or denying their existence. Evidence of the fact that sterilizations were once ordinarily performed for ’social‘ reasons puts the doctors‘ work in a bad light,“ says Lucie Rybová, director of the Czech Helsinki Committee, an NGO participating in drafting the law to compensate the victims.
According to Rybová, doctors referred to state-issued „indicators“ to explain their performance of sterilizations, mainly during the 1970s. „We have evidence that the indicators according to which sterilizations were performed – i.e., if a woman had four children by the age of 35 or three children by the age of 36 – targeted certain groups in the population to make sure they did not have more children, either due to their alleged ‚inadaptability‘ or because the mothers were disabled,“ she says.
How to deal with missing records is one of the main questions being addressed by the inter-ministerial group now designing the law. The question remains open as to whether and how to draft the law so it will apply to victims of sterilization prior to 1974, i.e., for cases where hospitals are no longer required by law to have preserved the records.
Source: Romea.cz
Date: 19.08.2014
Czech town cancels apartment tender after Romani woman makes the best offer
The Czech Public Defender of Rights has drawn the attention of the Chamber of Deputies to a case of possible discrimination on the grounds of ethnic origin in access to housing as part of her report on her office’s activity during the second quarter. A town has canceled its tender for leasing a municipally-owned apartment after a Romani applicant made the best offer.
The complainant turned to the Public Defender of Rights after she repeatedly participated in the tender without success. She met all of the criteria of the publically announced tender (she paid a deposit and was not in debt to the town at the time of the tender) and objectively won it, as she made the highest offer of rent.
Nevertheless, the town did not conclude a rental contract with her, as the town council subequently passed a resolution canceling the tender for that particular apartment. The reason for canceling the tender is not evident from the resolution.
The town has not communicated the reason for canceling the tender even though it was repeatedly asked to give one, first by the complainant and then by the Public Defender of Rights. The town council has no reasons for having proceeded in this way, or rather, is refusing to substantiate its decision. Continue reading Czech town cancels apartment tender after Romani woman makes the best offer