Miroslav Brož at the OSCE conference in Warsaw: Romani people in the Czech Republic can't access regular market rents due to discrimination and are exploited, the law is not being enforced
Last week the Konexe organization was represented by activist Miroslav Brož at the human rights conference of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), underway since 2 October in Warsaw, Poland. He sharply criticized the Czech Republic for failing to uphold the Antidiscrimination Act, which is a valid part of the Czech legal order. He pointed out that a significant proportion of Romani people in the Czech Republic live in ghettos inhabited by other Roma, in segregation, where they pay rents that are exponentially higher than non-Roma pay for similar housing.
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“A significant proportion of Romani people in the Czech Republic live in ghettos which are segregated and euphemistically called ‘socially excluded localities’, where they pay exponentially higher rents than the non-Roma population who do not live in such ghettos. In the Czech Republic, with very few exceptions, Romani people have no opportunity to rent normal apartments for normal prices because open discrimination against them on an ethnic basis strongly predominates on the housing market, Romani people are excluded from the regular housing market because of their ethnicity,” Brož said in his speech on Wednesday, 11 October, when the conference also addressed questions related to Romani and Sinti people in the 57 participating states of the OSCE.
Brož also said that the Antidiscrimination Act is not being upheld and that the Czech authorities are not enforcing it. “The Antidiscrimination Act is not upheld, it is openly violated on a massive scale, and it is not enforced by the Czech authorities, violations of it are not sanctioned, authorities at all levels and the police ignore and tolerate this,” he said, calling on the Czech Republic to do all it can to enforce the law in this regard on Czech territory.
Act No. 198/2009 is the Czech legislation that implements the relevant regulations of the European Union and the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms and further defines the right to equal treatment and the ban on discrimination in access to goods and services, education, employment, health care and social security. It took effect on 1 September 2009.
