ARA ART organization offers education and legal aid against hate crime for the Romani community in the Czech Republic
ARA ART, a Romani organization in the Czech Republic, launched a project in October 2023 called "Oda na kames", or "You Don't Want This" in Romanes. The aim of the project is to map and address hate crime and hate speech against Romani people both offline and online.
The organization sent a press release about the project to news server Romea.cz. ARA ART says Romani men and women are frequently the target of hate speech that can lead to bias crime.
“Oda na kames” tracks and then analyzes the kind and the volume of such speech online and also educates field workers to aid clients of Romani origin with this issue in the offline environment. “This activity aims above all to increase the effectiveness of the assistance provided to Romani clients, who commonly encounter hate speech in public, as well as tailoring the services provided so they will be more precise,” the press release reads.
The project offers advocacy and intervention to communicate the hate speech issue both to institutions and the general public, as well as providing free legal aid and counseling to Romani victims. The final phase of the project will involve a campaign informing Romani people as to how to defend and protect themselves against hate speech and violence.
“We are aware that the minority of the Roma is not the only group in society being subjected to hate speech or bias crime. We believe the outcomes of our project will also aid other groups grappling with this issue in the future,” says the ARA ART advocacy staffer Andrea Bučková, who previously worked as the Slovak Government Plenipotentiary for the Romani Community.
“Currently anybody affected by this subject who needs expert advice can contact us at info@araart.cz. In the future there will also be a dedicated phone number posted to www.araart.cz,” the press release states.
Hatred of Romani people has also been addressed by other nonprofit projects in the Czech Republic and in Europe. At the end of January, the young Romani men and women involved in a volunteer project of the European Roma Rights Centre, the Forum for Human Rights and the ROMEA organization to combat hate speech online in the Czech Republic released two publications.
The first publication, entitled Challenging Digital Antigypsyism in the Czech Republic, describes how Romani volunteers recorded 245 separate cases of racist speech toward Romani people online of various degrees of seriousness from the spring of 2022 to the summer of 2023. The second publication, entitled Prosecuting Digital Antigypsyism: A Policy Guide for the Czech Republic, contains recommendations for the criminal justice authorities, Interior Ministry and prosecutors on how to better address hate speech toward Romani people on the Internet.
The European Union has also provided financing to the SafeNet project, the aim of which is to monitor and report hate speech found on the Internet with the goal of creating a safer online environment. A consortium of 21 partners from all over Europe, including the ROMEA organization, are involved.
All of the partners in SafeNet are also members of the International Network against Cyber Hate (INACH) and the project concentrates on how social media companies respond when hate speech is reported to them. Overall the organizations have already reported 7,604 posts, 324 from the Czech Republic, the vast majority of which involved hatred toward Romani people.
