Roma family repeatedly attacked before fleeing to Canada

[bos1]

Source: Czech news service CTK via Prague Monitor

Prague, June 7 (CTK) - The husband, son and daughter of Anna Polakova, chief editor of the public Czech Radio (CRo) Romany broadcasting who has applied for asylum in Canada, were targets of verbal and physical attacks in the past years, Polakova told CRo Sunday.

Polakova said she had decided for the step for fear for her children and growing neo-Nazism in the Czech Republic. She said she had gone overseas as a similar situation was throughout Europe.

She said her son had been attacked a couple of years ago when he was returning from a disco in Prague.

He was assaulted by four skinheads who brutally kicked him up, Polakova said.

Read more: http://praguemonitor.com/2009/06/08/roma-family-repeatedly-attacked-fleeing-canada

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A major journalist in the Czech Republic has announced she is seeking political asylum in Canada due to fears for her family due to their Roma (Gypsy) ethnicity. The Czech Republic is a very western-oriented (Prague is west of Vienna) and wealthy country with a Democratic political system which currently holds the presidency of the EU. Ignore the poor translation because this article gives a good glimpse of the reality on the ground for Roma in Europe.

[zelta gaisma]

1. just *freaking* great...

""Polakova said she had decided for the step for fear for her children and growing neo-Nazism in the Czech Republic. .......Polakova said as she could see growing Nazism across Europe, she wanted to go overseas.""

Great just great, is stupidity contagious? Don't people ever learn bigotry makes things BAD for everyone. What is Germany like? I have been afraid(irrationally most likely I know) every since Germany was united.

[bos1]

2. German police and gov't is really tough on its neo-nazis

for obvious reasons, clamping down on them as much as possible. That's the quick answer

[zelta gaisma]

3. thank you

[bos1]

4. ur welcome.

Slightly longer answer is that in Berlin or the major cities you are going to find very cosmopolitan places, very open attitudes, no weirdness about race, and a very acknowledging attitude about the WW2 Nazis and the Holocaust (and yet with no feelings of guilt, interestingly enough. Those who didn't live through it don't feel the need to torture themselves over it. And they don't allow themselves to be lectured about it, especially by Americans who have a current war&death machine to answer for themselves).

But in the rest of Germany in terms of attitudes you can get the less-than-tolerant knee-jerk attitude typical of much of the small-towny places in Europe and the world. This can be a problem when elections come, since the majority of the population is outside the big cities.

Personally I think all of Central Europe has real issues with race and tolerance and openness and just plain being human. Racism and neo-Nazism is just a part of it.

[cosmicone]

5. Prague is to the EAST of Vienna, not West ... n/t

[bos1]

7. wrong. get a map. n/t

[harmonicon]

8. what map are you looking at?

[bos1]

9. maybe an upside down one. nt

[Odin2005]

6. Ugh, bigotry is on the rise in Europe

The whites-only British Nationalist Party just won 2 seats in the EU parliament. :puke:

[No Elephants]

10. On the same day that I read this, I read another thread about elections in Europe indicating that

Europeans were voting to the right.

A fine line between going right and going terribly wrong.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. One comment I read in the Guardian said that Europeans were voting

for more conservative parties because the self-styled "left" (e.g. Labour in Britain, which has not only not undone Thatcher's policies but has added ugly measures of its own) had betrayed its own principles and instituted policies that hurt the working and middle class, and the voters were "punishing" them for it.

The BNP gained (although not as much as people feared) because they exploit the anger of the working class and direct it toward immigration and minorities, sort of like our right-wingers who harp on immigration and loans to minorities as the causes of our financial crisis.

[Posteritatis]

12. And Italy was heading right into pogrom territory last year.. ugh (nt)