The Roma test: Czechia’s reforms and the persistence of contempt

From the report

ECRI’s assessors spent a week in Czechia last November. Their seventh report says much what the earlier ones said, and Prague has had two decades to read them, writes Rachel Savage

The Council of Europe’s anti-racism commission published its seventh report on Czechia on 27 October. ECRI’s team had been in the country the previous November, and by the standards of such documents the findings are warm. Some 300 police liaison officers for minorities, spread over 14 regional branches. A hate-crime specialist in each of roughly 80 prosecution offices. Sexual orientation added to the Criminal Code’s list of bias motives. A government commissioner for Roma affairs, and a president who speaks out about hate speech.

Then there are the numbers. Fifteen per cent of Roma pupils are taught outside mainstream classes, against 2.5 per cent of all pupils. Roma children are 3.5 per cent of primary pupils and 1.2 per cent of secondary ones. Some 130 schools have intakes at least 30 per cent Roma. The report notes another detail too: non-Roma parents sometimes press head teachers to keep it that way.