Amnesty International is urging the Slovak government to “immediately end the segregation of Romani children in the country’s education system.”

The Amnesty International website states:

This practice leaves thousands of Romani pupils in substandard education in schools and classes for pupils with “mild mental disabilities” or ethnically segregated mainstream schools and classes.

In a briefing to the Slovak government, Steps to end segregation in education, Amnesty International points to serious gaps in the enforcement and monitoring of the ban on discrimination and segregation in the Slovak educational system.

More here.

A powerful video about school segregation for Romani children in Slovakia can be viewed here. The situation is comparable to that in the Czech Republic:

“We are a space where different cultures meet. We preserve examples of Romani cultural history as part of Europe´s heritage. We educate the younger generation to be tolerant and to appreciate other cultures,” proclaims the motto of the Museum of Romani Culture, based in the Czech city of Brno. “We are committed to fighting xenophobia and racism. We are paving the way to a new understanding of the roots of Romani identity. All this we do in the name of mutual understanding. For a dialogue of cultures. For us.”

“A Romani museum of our scope does not exist anywhere else in the world,” explains Museum of Romani Culture director Dr. Jana Horváthová, who co-founded the institution in 1991 along with a group of scholars and community leaders, including the prominent Romani activist, current Ambassador of the Decade of Roma Inclusion, and Horváthová’s father Karel Holomek.

[Museum of Romani Culture. Photo credit: wikipedia]

The permanent exhibition traces Romani culture and history from the time of the Romani migration from India centuries ago up until present-day life in the Czech Republic.

“Our goal is to create the broadest possible collection of original documentation for the presentation of Romani history and culture,” says Horváthová.

Particularly well-documented and moving is the section on the Roma Holocaust, which comprises scores of photographs, testimonies, newspaper articles, official documents and original correspondence.

[Museum of Romani Culture Director. Photo by Tereza Bottman]

Other sections include artwork by Romani artists, cultural artifacts and descriptions of traditional customs and music. The exhibit also shows the history of Romani political activism in the Czech Republic as well as a collage of Roma-related press headlines collected over time and together forming a complex picture of the media coverage of Roma-related issues.

“Our museum is really an exemplar and a first of its kind,” Horváthová continues, “a fact which the Czech Republic perhaps does not value as much as it should.”

“There aren’t many Romani museums, ” Horváthová says, listing all other Roma-themed museums and permanent exhibits around Europe, including the Museum of Romani Culture in Slovakia, part of the Slovakian National Museum, and the Tarnów Ethnographic Museum, which now houses Poland‘s first permanent Roma-themed exhibition. She also mentions The Interpretation Centre and Ethnographic Museum in Granada, Spain, where an original Romani cave dwelling complex can be viewed.

[Museum of Romani Culture. Photo by Tereza Bottman]

In addition to the permanent exhibition, the Czech Museum of Romani Culture periodically presents temporary exhibitions of art and photography. The museum is also a Romani studies research center for all of Central Europe. It houses a Roma-themed library and bookstore as well as organizes lectures, concerts, panel debates and Romani language courses.

“We always say that it is important for people to come the first time and then visitors tend to return,” says Horváthová. “There are many people who hear about us and think that it is terrible here, that we are located in a slum. They are afraid of coming to a Romani neighborhood, so this type of prejudice deters many potential customers.”

“My wish,” Horváthová continues when asked about her vision for the future, “is for us, after so many years of effort, to be able to break the society-wide aversion toward the Roma.”

The museum has worked intently to make this vision a reality. The institution’s scope extends to helping to give Romani children a fair chance at adequate and academically challenging education.

In conjunction with the museum’s extensive afterschool education offerings for the neighborhood children, which include art, sports and performance classes as well as tutoring, a new program centered around integration of the chronically segregated Czech school system is underway.

As part of the program, a number of children have been identified by the museum’s educators for extra academic support and integration into schools with predominantly majority-population children in other areas of the city outside “the ghetto.” During the upcoming school year, the Romani children participating in this program will be accompanied by staff and bussed to new schools in order to improve their chances for a better education and future.

[Dr. Jana Horváthová, Museum of Romani Culture Director.
Photo by Tereza Bottman]

“The segregated schools in this neighborhood,” explains Horváthová, “have a population of 90 to 100 percent Romani children. There the teachers cannot give extra attention to the more gifted students and the curricula are not the same as in mainstream schools. These students, even when gifted, have no chance of getting into secondary schools. We have already confirmed this over the years of running educational programs. And it makes us very sad when children that would do well in secondary school, even college, do not make it because their schools are so behind mainstream programs and the children find it impossible to catch up to the level required for entrance exams and education at the secondary level.”

“These children will be pioneers,” says Horváthová. “The transition will be very difficult. The children are used to going to an all-Roma school, where it is, in a way an easier and more pleasant environment, because there they know the communication style and behavior of their classmates. When they begin in a classroom that is mostly non-Roma, it will be enormously stressful for them. They will need professional assistance. Without that, the transition is impossible to manage.”

When asked whether the teachers in the mostly majority population schools are prepared for the integration efforts, Horváthová explains: “What is needed to make integration successful are smaller class sizes and an educational assistant, preferably a Roma from the community, in the room, together with the teacher.”

She adds: “Very few teachers and classmates are aware of the reality of the child living in a ghetto and all the things the child has to deal with when entering the surrounding world.”

“Teachers from the majority population have gaps in this area. One of the programs we provide are educational seminars for teachers, which acquaint them with Romani history and culture,” she continues. “We often advise teachers who write us and ask us what they should do, how they should work with their Romani students.”

“I like the afterschool programs a lot,” says a fifth-grader who attends English language lessons and tutoring sessions at the museum in the afternoons. She says she likes learning languages and would like to also study Latin. In school, her favorite subject is Math. She wants to be a nurse or police officer when she grows up.

When asked whether she would be participating in the school integration program, she said she would very much like to, but that her mother is afraid: “My mom is scared because the other school is too far, that a tram could hit me or that I could get lost.”

“Family support is a substantial, if not key ingredient, along with the child’s internal motivation, in determining which of the children are chosen for the program. If the parents did not understand or agree with the placement, it would be almost impossible to retain the child at a prestigious school,” explains Horváthová.

As far as a systemic change which would ensure all-around success on the school integration front, Horváthová believes much work has yet to be done.

“Ever since the revolution in 1989,” says Horváthová, “our organization has been calling for systemic change in the arena of education, but each time a government is replaced following an election cycle, a new minister is put in place who must familiarize himself with the situation, which makes systemic reform very difficult.”

Horváthová calls the museum’s school integration program daring and adventurous and says that even with all their effort, success is not guaranteed.

[Museum of Romani Culture, photo by Tereza Bottman]

“We have been observing a trend that shows that many Roma who do leave ‘the ghetto’ and do obtain higher education often have an interest in communicating with Roma from different groups inside the community which is very diverse, and in working in the non-profit sector and helping their community toward a common goal of uplifting our ethnic group.”

Horváthová confides that the economic downturn has been difficult for her organization: “Today’s economic situation has been troubling for us and other museums, I am sure. Culture is probably, so to speak, our society’s Cinderella. So, we are afraid of how the future will pan out. I can imagine that currently even mainstream museums are having a difficult time sustaining themselves, but when we approach sponsors, they usually turn us down. The will to support any Roma-related activities is just not there.”

[Dr. Jana Horváthová, photo credit: iDnes]

Horváthová’s vision for the museum is to grow and to continue expanding its collections.

“Next year will mark twenty years of our museum’s existence,” she concludes. “We have the spirit of a warrior, and we hope no one breaks that in us.”

“Me, me! Now it’s my turn!” the local kids clamor to try my cell phone camera, taking pictures of each other, of me, of their fingers in front of the lens.

“What’s your name? Do you have kids? Is he your husband?” they ask, surrounding me and gesturing toward the man with whom I arrived here.

[children who greeted us upon our arrival in Letanovce]

It’s drizzling. The muddy ground throughout the village doesn’t bother me. I have traveled more than ten hours to this place from Prague by bus and car, prepared, wearing my reliable pair of enclosed leather shoes. Meanwhile, the mud splatters all over my colleague’s feet in sandals, reaching up between his toes. He mutters, admonishing himself for dressing as if this were his first time here.

“To understand the Roma in the Czech Republic, you have to visit a Romani settlement in Slovakia,” my fellowship colleague told me when he invited me along on his annual pilgrimage to the settlement of Letanovce to visit a family he befriended ten years ago when he began working in the arena of Roma rights.

Many, if not the majority, of Romani families who live in the Czech Republic now, migrated there from rural Slovakia sometime between World War II and the present day.

According to Czech Radio’s article on the history of the Roma minority, after the war, during which more than 90 percent of Czech Roma were killed by the Nazis, “Roma from settlements in Eastern Slovakia started to migrate to the evacuated Czech frontier regions and were dispersed as a light work force throughout the industrial areas of Bohemia and Moravia,” the two regions that make up the Czech Republic.

A 1958 law, the Czech Radio article continues, mandated migrating peoples to settle down permanently “where they were assigned as a work force, without regard to the separation of families. In 1965, another law was passed concerning the procedure of dispersing the gypsy population, through which Roma from eastern Slovakian Romani villages had to move to Bohemia to work.”

The migration to the Czech Republic continues today, tied to people’s search for work, better living conditions, and reunification with families.

[Letanovce panorama]

There are between 700 and 800 socially isolated Romani settlements in Slovakia, which, together with the Czech Republic, made up Czechoslovakia until the peaceful split in 1993. These settlements tend to have disproportionately high unemployment rates of 90 to 100%, and lack basic services such as running water, sewers, electricity, gas or garbage collection. Letanovce, where I am visiting, fits this profile to a tee.

The approximately 700 local residents live in one-room log cabins, burn wood for heat, carry their water in buckets from a well at the bottom of the hill, and use a latrine or the adjacent tall green weeds as bathrooms.

We are invited in to the larger-than-the-local-norm two-room cabin of the family with whom we will be staying. They did not expect us. We had no way of contacting them, although several residents do have cell phones, some even with internet service. The challenge, I learn, is charging electronic items, as there is no electricity in this community. A few residents have small, six-inch televisions, which run on car batteries charged for a fee in town.

We bring in our gifts: food, second-hand clothes, toys and some odd household items like wash basins and dishes. We sit and crack open the pear brandy we had brought, toasting with shot glasses. Then it is quiet.

I feel awkward, my privilege so blatant here, wondering how to bridge the chasm between my life experience and that of the locals’.

The family slowly begins to unravel old stories from my colleague’s past visits, updating us on the changes in the community.

[Magda's family and neighbors. We stayed at her sister's and mother's house.]

Many families migrated to the UK for work, then after two or three years returned back, because even there, work was hard to come by.

“After two years in England I honestly did not want to come back,” one of the women whose house we are in tells me. True, her husband worked twelve-hour shifts six days a week at a sausage factory for very little pay, but it was work. And they had electricity and plumbing. But the bills kept coming and the work slowly dried up due to the recession.

Before it gets dark, we decide to take a walk around the village.

The residents come out into the rain to take a look at us. We greet everyone, the children forming our entourage.

I ask the children what they do for fun. Some shrug their shoulders, others say they play with toys or go swimming in the nearby river. Some try out the English they learned while living abroad: “Do you speak English?” and “How are you?”

Although Slovak and Czech are mutually intelligible, with some children there is a bit of a language barrier. The children all speak Romani at home, some of the younger ones don’t even understand Slovak when they first start school, our host tells me. That is why bilingual Romani educational assistants are key to helping the students transition and be successful in school. However, these children have no such assistants where they go to school.

Our host worked as a teacher’s assistant for several months, but got paid very little, and still of her own initiative did extra work outside her working hours. For instance, she gathered the children in the village and personally walked them to school 3 kilometers from the settlement. Unfortunately, her contract was never signed, and, in the end, her social benefits were cut because she’d had an income, no matter how inadequate to sustain the family.

“I would be so happy working as a classroom assistant. That work speaks to me,” she said. “But when I have approached the school, which currently does not have any Roma working there, they have always told me they do not have any positions open.”

“The walk to town is about a half-hour and most mothers do not have money for the bus or for lunch. We don’t have fridges here, so it is hard for us to give our kids snacks early in the morning because over night, the food would spoil,” she says, describing the barriers that parents here face when it comes to their children’s education.

Most Romani children in the community attend a “practical,” formerly special education school. Placement of Romani children, whether special needs or not, in such schools is common practice across Europe. Romani children, based on a psychological evaluation, are many more times likely to be placed in “practical schools” than white children and are overrepresented in such institutions, sometimes comprising the entire population of such schools. The results are segregation, lower-quality education and less opportunity for success in further schooling or employment.

In 2007, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that this pattern of segregation violated nondiscrimination protections in the European Convention on Human Rights. However, Roma continue to be assigned to these schools in disproportionate numbers.

“What subjects do you like in school?” I ask. The children shout over each other with excitement: “Reading! Writing! Math! Social Studies!”

As we chat while walking outside, I hear growling and yapping. Out of the corner of my eye I see a small dog charging at me, and before I know it, I feel it sinking its needly claws and teeth into the back of my thigh, ripping a large hole in my pants. The dog retreats as fast as it came.

I’m bleeding, but no one seems concerned. Only my travel partner from my fellowship organization Dženo half-jokes: “Hope the dog wasn’t rabid.”

The girls tell me the dog bites them too sometimes. Later that night, I sneakily dip my fingers into my shot glass and spread some pear brandy we are drinking onto the bite wound to disinfect it.

“I am ashamed,” our host confesses, half-whispering, when she shows me where I will be sleeping. It is the family bed, big enough for four or five people. I tell her she has nothing to be ashamed of, but her sentiment deepens the discomfort I already feel about invading the family’s privacy.

The bedroom is beautifully decorated with flowers, tapestries and chachkis lining the shelves. I will be sharing the big bed with the children, the parents unfold a mattress and place it on the floor where they will sleep.

In 2003, construction on a new apartment complex, financed by the town, state and European Union, began several kilometers from the current location of the settlement. The idea was moving the families to another location and leveling the place which many consider an eyesore in such a picturesque area favored by tourists. Families with permanent residency would be able to apply to relocate to the new apartment complex even more distant from the center of the town. No worries, the apartment complex would also have a school and a store on location.

The protests from the neighboring majority community that this project unleashed ranged from petitions to threats to the mayor that if he proceeds with the plan, an anonymous, angry local would poison the pristine rivers in the area with mercury. A skull was even found on the construction site with a letter threatening the mayor would be murdered for going through with this plan.

As of today, new buildings have not yet been completed. When they are ready, the problem is that many of those in the settlement will not qualify to move in, because they lack permanent residency status in Letanovce. Also, the new living conditions will require paying for rent, electricity and water bills, a practice many families are not used to and for which they have very limited means, considering their prohibitively high unemployment rate.

When the village wakes up the next day, we are all more comfortable with each other. I play and joke with the children, who teach me card games and sing, accompanied by a boy on a drum set in the wood shed.

We take a walk in Slovakian Paradise, a mountainous, forested nature reserve nearby. The kids go swimming there. They pick wild raspberries along the way for me.

“Do you ever fish in this river?” I ask the nine-year-old girl who has become my constant companion.

“No, we are rich,” she replies. “We have been to England. We buy smoked fish at the store.”

When we return, a dozen men from the settlement have their bags packed and are headed for the train. They found work all the way in Prague, ten hours away. Ten days in a row they will work construction, not knowing whether they will get paid. Temporary workers like these men, employed under the table so as not to lose their social benefits, are easy targets for companies that profit from their cheap labor. If the boss doesn’t pay them, the laborers have almost no leverage to demand their salary.

“We get visitors once in a while, from Brussels and such places. Whoever comes, always needs to write something about us, it seems,” says the host as we gather in her kitchen.

My colleague and I freeze up for a bit. We, too, are those visitors the woman had just described. Here one day, gone the next, and what remains are perhaps a few toys or items of clothing and an article about this community, floating about somewhere in ether.

“When you write about us,” our host tells me softly, “say that we want help. We don’t want to live like this anymore.” So I pass on her words, thankful for the locals’ generosity and richer for all that they had taught me, so essential for the work still ahead.

[a picture the kids took during one of our cell phone photo sessions]

“My work has become my hobby,” says Richard Samko, the second ever Romani news anchor on Czech Television. “The work is colorful and diverse. It’s also an adrenaline rush, and I like that.”

[Richard Samko, photo credit Czech Radio]

Samko has worked in the field of journalism for eleven years as a reporter, news anchor and more recently host of Events and Commentary, a nightly program featuring news analysis and political commentary.

In the late 1990s, the Dženo Association introduced Samko to the world of journalism in a training designed to bring up a new generation of Romani reporters.

Samko is a pioneer, with only Ondřej Giňa, Jr., the first news anchor of Romani background in the Czech Republic, having blazed the trail before him. Samko’s drive, energy and passion for his work in the news media underscore our conversation.

“I stuck with it for years, working my way up, because I wanted to make it far,” says Samko. “The opportunity was something a person gets only once in a lifetime. To get to work in Czech Television is huge; it’s power.”

Samko has covered topics as wide-ranging as immigration, problems inside the police force, right-wing extremism, traffic law, housing issues and unemployment. He has also taken part in producing documentaries, an interest he would like to pursue in greater depth.

One documentary on which Samko collaborated was The Saga of the Roma (Sága Romů), a film examining the changes in the Romani community and its relationship to the majority population during the second half of the 20th century. Samko confesses filmmaking is his dream.

“When I worked on The Saga, filmmaking really grabbed me. I saw that the work was more creative,” Samko recalls. “I then made a few short documentaries myself.”

“I would like to make a film that is Roma-themed,” Samko continues. “I can see that as the most realistic undertaking for me; a topic which I understand the best and can say the most about.”

One of the most powerful aspects of being so visible in the media is Samko’s ability to inspire Romani children, who look up to him as a role model from their own ranks.

Whenever Samko’s hectic schedule allows it, Samko travels to Romani cultural festivals to act as master of ceremonies and to speak to the children.

“I want the children to see a positive example of what is possible to achieve,” says Samko.

One of his projects is a program called Fledglings (Ptáčata), in which a television crew follows a group of second-graders, many of them Romani, as they learn to become camera operators, reporters and news anchors while documenting their own lives.

Samko is a visionary. He recognizes the potential in his community and advocates for the skills of those newly trained in his field to be harnessed. Once funding for Dženo’s Romani station Radio Rota is renewed and the broadcast expanded via digital satellite technology, Samko, who would work with the station in advisory capacity, sees an enormous opportunity for a new generation of journalists.

“Radio Rota should be funded,” asserts Samko, “because it would serve as a base for those who have started on a path towards a career in journalism. There is a potential here that should be developed further. In mainstream television, where I work, there is no time for on-the-job training or mentoring. New journalists have to be ready to start working at a professional level. That’s where media organizations such as Dženo and Radio Rota come in.”

Another role that Radio Rota could fulfill is that of enabling journalists from the majority population to access experiences of the members of Romani community whose issues would be of interest because they ‘affect the entire country,’ as Samko says.

“Mainstream media could draw on the work of Romani journalists reporting for Radio Rota,” Samko continues, “because they tend to be the ones with access to the Romani community, something the average Czech reporter doesn’t have.”

In addition to providing information mainstream journalists could draw on as well as hands-on experience to young Romani reporters, Radio Rota, because the Czech Republic is in the center of Europe, could serve as the heart of Romani newscasting, says Samko.

“Radio Rota could broadcast news programming from around the world,” Samko envisions. “We know journalists in Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia, Poland, etc. We know people everywhere. In all these places there are journalists who would contribute Romani-themed programs. The station could be a pan-European showcase.”

To close, Samko urges: “I want my fellow Roma to persevere in doing what they enjoy despite obstacles they may encounter. The opportunities are there. It may take a few years. There will be a few years of waiting, but then the chance to get to a better place will arrive and they will be able to fulfill their dreams.”

“And as far as the majority community is concerned,” Samko concludes, “more tolerance is necessary. There needs to be more room and less judgement of people based on their looks or minority status. Minorities must be given a chance.”

This week, the Czech Republic is officially taking over the rotating presidency of the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015, an international initiative whose goal is to improve the living conditions of the Roma across Europe.

The initiative brings together the governments of twelve European countries along with intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations “to accelerate progress toward improving the welfare of Roma.“ The parnter organizations include the World Bank, the Open Society Institute, the United Nations Development Program, the the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Council of Europe, European Roma Information Office, and the European Roma Rights Centre.

According to the Decade of Roma Inclusion website, “the Decade focuses on the priority areas of education, employment, health, and housing, and commits governments to take into account the other core issues of poverty, discrimination, and gender mainstreaming.“

Now midway through the project, the reactions among Roma activists and community members vary, but veer on the side of skepticism.

Today I spoke to Ivan Veselý, head of the Dženo Association and member of the Decade of Roma Inclusion steering committee. Mr. Veselý has been with the intiative since its planning phase and has been so invested in the Decade that he calls the initiative “his child.“

“The initial aim of the Decade was two-fold,“ says Mr. Veselý. “One goal was to demand that member governments change their policies toward the Roma minority. The second major goal was to jumpstart a Roma rights movement across Europe.“

When asked about the effectiveness of the the Decade, he curses, expressing deep disappointment. He feels that the intiative was implemented without the necessary preliminary capacity building and that the efforts towards Roma inclusion are mostly conferences, declarations, reports, and more words; not enough action.

The goals for each country that is part of the Decade have been outlined, measurable indicators set, but, so far, there are few results.

“The main problem,“ says Mr. Veselý, “ is that no money has been allocated by the Czech government to achieve the Decade’s aims.“

During Czech Republic’s presidency, the priorities are: inclusive education (contrary to the current practice of unjustly segragating large numbers of Romany children in schools for the mentally handicapped); children’s living situations and their rights; the empowerment of Romany women; the implementation of local-level integration policies; and improving the image of Roma in the media.

The action plan for the Czech Republic comprises objectives such as providing Romany students equal access to pre-school as well as higher education; training educators in multicultural teaching methods; preventing residential segregation; increasing access of low-income Roma families to affordable housing; and boosting the employability and employment rates of the Roma through training, incentives and investment aimed at the creation of Roma-run small business enterprises.

What many, including Mr. Veselý, would like to see and have been advocating is a systemic change which begins with a firm, sustained, long-term committment on the part of the government. Such committment must take the form of allocation of a sufficient amount of money, so that the carefully crafted action plan can be implemented in all key sectors and throughout all regions.

With right-wing extremism on the rise, increased risk of racially motivated harassment and violence against minorities has become a reality in the Czech Republic. The economic downturn in Europe, as in the United States, is plunging people into poverty and fueling xenophobia, racism, insecurity and hightening tensions between disadvantaged groups. Extremist ideology is also becoming increasingly used in political rhetoric, and many worry about the possibility of hate becoming a mainstream political vehicle as has happened in Hungary, for instance, where the far-right party Jobbik currently holds 47 of 386 parliamentary seats.

The annual report of the human rights group, Czech Helsinki Commitee, cites as one of the primary issues facing the Czech Republic, “the increasing radicalization of neo-Nazis and violent attacks against the Roma population.” An example of this is an April 2009 arson attack on a Roma family, which resulted in a two-year-old girl suffering severe burns to 80 percent of her body. The perpetrators of the attack are associated with a far-right group and are currently on trial.

In light of this alarming trend, what kinds of efforts are Czech institutions undertaking, specifically in the field of education (a later post will focus on violence prevention via the criminal justice system), to curb the appeal of hate group ideology to economically struggling whites?

In response to the growth of the neo-Nazi movement, and with the intention of steering young people away from the dangers of the ideology of hate, Varianty, an educational program of the human rights organization People in Need, created a booklet for teachers to use in the classroom. The booklet is available online and in CD-form to be ordered for free by schools. The organization is, according to the news service iDnes, currently out of funds to provide printed copies of the text.

The approximately two-hundred-page long booklet, “The Threat of Neo-Nazism, Democratic Opportunities”, describes the history of homegrown right-wing extremism. The text, developed in cooperation with the police unit specializing in monitoring extremist activity, also contains pictures of neo-Nazis and their insignia as well as topics for facilitated discussions. The most controversial aspect of the booklet is the inclusion of passages from hate group literature. The authors, however, argue that such information is widely available to those students who choose to seek it out and that examining it critically is crucial.

In the booklet, teachers are provided with guidelines on how to present and analyze the materials with their students. However, the reality is that many educators are still unsure about how to approach the subjects of extremism and racism, and as a result steer away from providing their students with the opportunity to examine hate group ideology critically. Clearly, instructors need more tools and support on how to implement such ambitious programs in their classrooms. Additionally, there needs to be a system-wide effort to infuse public school curriculum with anti-bias education.

According to the press agency iDnes, the Czech Ministry of Education is currently preparing “a directive concerning education against racism, xenophobia, and intolerance.” It is unclear how this directive will differ from the 1995 version, which simply asks of schools and educators to teach about tolerance without any accountability. Let us hope the initiative goes beyond a directive in outlining a strategy for teacher training and support and in setting some specific, measurable goals. Education countering the power of hate ideology is of crucial importance now.

Of course, one key way of preventing extremism, aside from discussing and taking a strong stance against it outright with students, is through dismantling divisions and prejudice between groups from an early age. In the Czech Republic, where segregation in education is a serious problem affecting the Roma, more of an effort must be made to make schools inclusive and to retain Romani students and teaching assistants in mainstream classrooms.

“Exclusion of Romani students from mainstream classrooms and their education in segregated schools in Romani communities,” states the Czech Government Approach toward Roma Integration for the Years 2010-2013, “make experiencing contact impossible for other students, thereby endangering their readiness for peaceful coexistence in the future. Segregation elevates the risk of mistrust, spread of prejudice and xenophobia between the two groups.”

Amnesty International UK published a report today condemning the human rights situation of the Roma throughout the EU. Note the recent ruling in Italy, potentially enabling vigilantism against Roma.

As the EU Observer states:

Segregation of Roma continues to be a serious problem in central and eastern Europe, but also in Italy, where “unlawful forced evictions” drive them further into poverty. Italy also passed new legislation enabling local authorities to authorise associations of unarmed civilians not belonging to state or local police forces to patrol the territory of a municipality, a measure which “may result in discrimination and vigilantism”, especially against Roma. Slovakia stands out particularly for Romani children segregation, with the Roma Education Fund reporting that almost 60 percent of them are put in special classes for mentally disabled, although they were not diagnosed as such. Local authorities are criticised for engaging in forced evictions and even erecting walls to separate Roma settlements from the rest of the community. Bratislava is also suspected of turning a blind eye to sterlisation of Romani women.

When I announced to my Czech father that this summer I am coming to the Czech Republic, where he lives and where I grew up, to help advocate for Roma rights as an Advocacy Project fellow, he asked: “Will you be going out into ‘the field’?”

I replied that I most likely will and that I hope to do so, although I will surely be spending quite a bit of my time in the Prague office of Dženo Association, the Roma press agency I will be working for. (The truth is, of course, I don’t know yet, because I have yet to start.)

My father’s next response was: “Well, I can take you out to the field. I know some activists who can take you around. Then you’ll really see how those people are.”

The tone of his voice implied a sentiment I’ve heard from my fellow Czechs too many times to count: there is nothing that can be done unless the “unruly,” “problematic” Roma minority assimilates into the white Czech majority population. The commonly held belief is that most Roma people live in ghettos (and yes, housing segregation is a real issue); that they are “unconforming,” rowdy, lazy people prone to a life of crime, poverty and misery. But these stereotypes must be challenged and questioned.

[government-funded anti-racism campaign poster: "together against racism"]

Just today, Amnesty International UK released a report, which condemns the breaches of the human rights of the European Roma. As the German press agency Deutsche Welle states:

“The report identifies systemic discrimination against Roma communities in several European countries: substandard schools for Roma children in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, forced evictions in Italy, Serbia and Macedonia, and assaults and murders of Roma in Hungary.”

The list of barriers the Roma face across Europe is overwhelmingly long. The issues are outlined well by the Hungary-based European Roma Rights Centre, an international public interest law organization working to combat anti-Romani racism and human rights abuse of Roma. The issues are:

- increasing racially-motivated violence, often lacking adequate prosecution
- rising extremism, driven in large part by extremist political parties and politicians who “have sharpened their anti-Romani rhetoric and actions, creating a climate in which rights violations are more likely to occur with impunity.”
- discrimination in access to health care and social assistance
- coercive sterilization of Romani women
- widespread residential segregation
- evictions due to gentrification and a lack of affordable housing
- lack of coordinated response to discrimination from governmental bodies

All of the above are symptoms and manifestations of institutional racism, prevalent all across Europe, and strongly present and visible in the Czech Republic.

My goal as an AP fellow is to help inform international audiences about these issues and to help illuminate not only best practices combating these barriers, but also the resilience, resourcefulness and strength of the Roma people and their allies as they work to create a more equitable society.

And as for battling the prejudice that surfaces in my interactions with the majority population in the Czech Republic, including my family members, I will see. I can’t remain silent, but I may have to find a way to make brief, strong statements and conserve my energy, which instead of hitting against wall after wall, would be much better spent on directly supporting the advocacy work of the press agency I will be with.