Czech Govt Commissioner for Roma Minority Affairs Lucie Fuková: Romani tensions need to be addressed on more than one level, local Roma need to be involved in their neighborhoods, experts will focus on combating the spread of anti-Ukrainian disinformation

Czech Government Commissioner for Roma Minority Affairs Lucie Fuková informed journalists of these developments after a meeting with representatives of several local administrations, line ministries and nonprofits on the current situation in Romani communities. According to her, mapping is currently underway of the needs and situations in Romani communities.

The results of that exercise should be available in roughly three weeks. Those attending the meeting agreed that it is necessary to address the current situation at more than one level and concentrate on activities with both short-term and long-term aims.

Those are, for example, combating disinformation among Romani people, strengthening Roma trust in the system, and working directly in the localities. It is important to involve Romani people themselves in resolving problems in the localities.

LIVE BROADCAST OF THE PRESS CONFERENCE (RECORDING)

The meeting today was in response to the recent events in more than one town throughout the country in which Romani people have marched on locales where Ukrainian nationals reside. These tensions arose after a recent incident in Brno where a young Romani man died as a result of a street brawl.

OUTCOMES OF THE MEETING

• An instruction manual of the 10 main principles to follow will be created for municipalities and other local stakeholders describing how to proceed in cases of tensions or violence escalating.
• A communications manual of the 10 main recommended communications principles will be created to aid municipalities and other interested parties with preventing conflicts.
• Local structures will be defined for coordinated, fast interventions during situations of prejudicial violence escalating.
• The Czech Government Human Rights Commissioner will establish an expert group on de-escalating and preventing prejudicial violence involving representatives of the police, ministries and expert non-governmental organizations.
• Functional instruments will be created in a systematic way for both ethnic and national minorities to participate in these endeavors.
• We will pay specific attention to preventing radicalization of society as a whole and strengthening its resistance to disinformation.

Many Romani figures have condemned these anti-Ukrainian actions, warned against applying collective guilt, and called for caution. “We would like to create a working group on disinformation and the media so we can quickly respond to the disinformation scene, which rapidly manipulates communities in socially excluded localities. Purveyors of disinformation are quite fast, they do their best to manipulate Romani people in the community and to abuse their social situations,” Fuková said.

According to her, another team should dedicate itself to involving Romani people in decision-making in different locales. Solutions in the towns and villages where these incidents are transpiring should involve local Roma.

“We do not want Romani people from other towns representing local Roma to the local authorities. It is necessary to support trustworthy local leaders who have a history and a voice in the community. Dialogue is the only thing that can lead to a solution,” Fuková said.

The Commissioner for Roma Minority Affairs also said the Ministry for Regional Development will prepare a list of 10 recommendations for local authorities featuring the measures which should be able to calm any incidents. She said what lies behind the frustration of Romani people is the fact that they have long not been accepted as a minority in society and that antigypyism has long been a factor in their lives.

The Government’s Annual Reports on the Situation of the Romani Minority have also been warning of this fact. The problems of Roma in each locale should be ascertained by the mapping exercise now underway.

The questionnaires in that exercise are concentrating on education, employment and housing. The results should be available in roughly three weeks.

The Commissioner and representatives of Romani-run organizations are calling for calm, even-handedness, and for people to verify allegations before believing them. “We do not want to support hateful speech and collective guilt. I have always been against that. As Romani people, we are all too familiar with what that is and what it means. That makes me all the sadder to see this from Romani people today. I believe just a smaller segment of Romani people are involved in this. The people whom we see at these demonstrations are not a representative sample. They’re just more audible and more visible, more’s the pity,” Fuková said.