Around 200 people commemorated Romany victims of the Holocaust at the site of the former Lety concentration camp in southern Bohemia on Sunday. Speaking at the memorial service, member of the government board for minorities, Štefan Tišer said political parties should not try to win support using xenophobia present in parts of the Czech society. The participants criticized the government for having failed to remove a large pig farm from the site of the camp. Some 5,000 Czech Romanies were transported into concentration camps during WWII; 90 percent of were killed. .
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A number of Czech cities purposely misuse residential subsidies, according to an analysis of last year’s austerity packages on ghetto areas. The report, which was compiled for the Ministry of Labour, states that some municipal authorities give the donations to families in need to pay the communities own, high-rent accommodation. It also says that some government cuts and reforms have evidently greatly contributed to a slump for entire groups of residents, while others have not affected ghetto inhabitants at all.
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An adolescent boy who was brutally beaten by three men, allegedly Roma, in Břeclav in April was selling marijuana, which might be the reason for the attack, according to the news website iDnes.cz. The site says that the boy has changed his testimony in this respect, originally saying that the three men had asked him for a cigarette. As he did not have any, they beat him up so brutally that he lost his kidney.
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The Czech Helsinki Committee says that in the past decade anti-Roma sentiment in the country has risen by 15 percent. Petr Uhl a member of the committee said that according to various polls and studies anti-Roma sentiment among Czechs had risen from 60 to 75 percent in the last decade. He said the negative attitude towards the Roma minority was a contributing factor to the steady decline in the living standard of Romanies and was straining relations between the majority population and the Roma. Mr.
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Some two thousand ultra-right activists marched through the town of Břeclav on Sunday afternoon in a show of support for a 15-year-old youth who was brutally attacked by three allegedly Roma youths. Participants in the march, organized by the youth branch of the National Workers Party for Social Justice, chanted slogans against Romanies whom they accuse of terrorising the local inhabitants and the Břeclav town hall which they say is incapable to securing law and order. There were stormy scenes outside the town hall when demonstrators met face to face with the mayor and demanded to know what he was doing to improve security. The mayor promised a better camera system and more street patrols.
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Police are gearing up for a march of ultra-right supporters in the town of Břeclav on Sunday, where the youth branch of the National Workers Party for Social Justice aids to demonstrate its solidarity with a 15-year-old youth who was brutally attacked by three allegedly Roma youths. The victim had to have one of his kidneys removed after the attack suffered liver damage as well. He remains in serious condition.
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The city hall of Břeclav has given a march organized by the far-right Workers’ Youth the green light. The march is set to take place Sunday and organizers say it is a gesture of support for the 15-year-old victim of a brutal attack in the city. Three Roma men are suspected of having beaten up the teenage boy after he refused to give them cigarettes.
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Far-right extremists from the Workers Party for Social Justice held a march through the predominantly Roma-inhabited neighborhood of Chanov in the suburbs of Most in Northern Bohemia on Saturday. Some 60 to 70 people joined the march; much fewer than had previously been expected. Some one hundred anti-right-wing protesters also gathered in the impoverished Chanov area but pledged that their demonstration would be a non-violent one. Police were monitoring the situation closely; there were no clashes between both groups. .
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