Still No Answer for Forcibly Sterilised Romani Women in the Czech Republic

This is a critical issue that the Czech Republic would love to sweep under the rug. The more we voice our outrage, the better chance we have of not only getting the practice stopped, but of getting these women the help they need. Education is critical in such matters. This article comes to us from the ERRC.

Still No Answer for Forcibly Sterilised Romani Women in the Czech Republic

22 November 2011

Ostrava, Brno, Budapest, 22 November 2011: Two years after the Czech Government under Prime Minister Fischer expressed regret for individual sterilisations of Romani women, the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), Life Together, the League for Human Rights and The Group of Women Harmed by Forced Sterilisation remain deeply concerned that no effective steps have been taken to provide the victims with adequate redress for irreparable injuries.

No official government follow-up has ever ascertained the extent of the problem or offered to support those affected. Current legislation in the Czech Republic prevents the majority of victims of coercive/forced sterilisation from bringing claims due to statutory limitation regulations.

“I was sterilised against my will. I was asked to sign a paper but nobody explained what it was. Only later did I realise that I cannot have children. They took my ability to have children away,” said Elena Gorolova, a member of the Group of Women Harmed by Forced Sterilization.

“It’s unacceptable that this practice, which was state-sanctioned, has never been addressed by the government. Thousands of Romani women who were unlawfully sterilised cannot access any remedy at all,” said Dezideriu Gergely, Executive Director of the ERRC.

“The recent favourable Czech Supreme Court verdict concerning the sterilisation of a Romani woman does not bring any real changes for the possibility of other Romani women to bring claims, as that verdict was very specific and no general analogies can be drawn from it. Therefore, it’s still very difficult for other Romani women to obtain redress through the courts,” Kateřina Červená, lawyer of the League of Human Rights, said.

In other European states where sterilisations of Romani women occurred, measures have been taken to perform outreach to victims and compensate them. In Sweden in the late 1990s, the government established an independent commission to investigate the scope of the problem of coercively sterilised women and subsequently set up a compensation mechanism for victims.

The organisations call on the relevant Czech authorities to urgently take the necessary steps to establish an independent commission to collect information on the numbers of sterilised Romani women in both the former Czechoslovakia and the present-day Czech Republic. This data should form the basis of a compensation mechanism.

“There is a responsibility for the government to ensure that the Romani women who have been unlawfully deprived of their reproductive ability obtain effective remedy. The damage done to these women is irreparable. As miserable a remedy as it may be, the bare minimum would be to give them financial compensation and a study of the long-term bodily and psychological effects of sterilisation,” Kumar Vishwanathan, Director of Life Together, stated.

At present, two cases brought by coercively/forcibly sterilised Romani women are pending against the Czech Republic before the European Court of Human Rights.

Recently, the European Court held Slovakia in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights for the unlawful sterilisation of a Romani woman there under circumstances overwhelmingly similar to those of many women in the Czech Republic who have suffered these abuses.
For more information, please contact:

Sinan Gökcen
Media and Communications Officer
European Roma Rights Centre
sinan.gokcen@errc.org
+36.30.500.1324
Elena Gorolová,
Co-ordinator
Group of Women Harmed by Forced Sterilization
elena.gorolova@seznam.cz
+420 775 761 194 (only Czech)
Kateřina Červená
Lawyer
League of Human Rights
kcervena@llp.cz
+420 777 701 621
Kumar Vishwanathan
Director
Life Together
vzajemne.souziti@tiscali.cz
+420 777 70 191

DH and others v the Czech Republic

This article comes to us from the European Roma Rights Center. While it is true that the Czech Republic has multiple human rights violations against the Roma, it is time for them to take action. If they continue to refuse, then the EU and other member states should take action. We find it interesting that other member states, who are under the same obligations as the Czech Republic, have not forced the issue against the Czechs.

Czech Republic: Four Years After Landmark Judgment, Urgent Action Needed to Stop Illegal Segregation of Romani Children into Special Education

14 November 2011

Budapest, New York, 14 November 2011: The Council of Europe must take action now to stop continuing illegal discrimination against Romani school children in the Czech Republic, two leading rights groups said today.

The European Roma Rights Centre and the Open Society Justice Initiative note that four years have now gone by since a landmark judgment found that Romani children were being disproportionately channeled into “special schools” where they, along with children with disabilities, were segregated from other students and taught to a limited curriculum. The European Court of Human Rights ruled on 13 November 2007 that this practice violated the children’s right to education and to be free from discrimination.

Today, the Czech education system remains broken, even though the European Court had told the Czech government to fix the problem and redress the effects of discrimination.

The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers – the body charged with making sure European Court judgments are respected – must ramp up the pressure on the Czech government to deliver changes on the ground, according to the European Roma Rights Centre and the Open Society Justice Initiative.

“With every year that passes – and this is number four – another group of Romani children are being shunted towards dead end futures,” James Goldston, the Justice Initiative’s Executive Director said. “All children deserve a decent chance in life and in Czech Republic they are not getting it.”

No evidence exists that anything has changed for Romani children since the D.H. and others v Czech Republic judgment, according to an ERRC and Justice Initiative report issued this week. The only official data on the number of Romani children in special education, published in 2010, showed that in some parts of the country, Romani children were still 27 times more likely to be herded into segregated “practical schools” - the same levels as when the case was first taken to the European Court in 1999. Czech government proposals for reform remain unfunded. Implementation of inclusive education plans has effectively stalled. Last week, the Czech Minister of Education proclaimed his support for the discriminatory system of special education.

“It is unacceptable that segregation is still the norm in Czech education,” said Dezideriu Gergely, Executive Director of the ERRC. “The Czech government should adopt effective measures to explicitly mandate desegregation for all children languishing in segregated classes.”

The two groups urged the Committee of Ministers to visit the Czech Republic to see for itself how little has changed on the ground for Romani children. It also asked that the Committee demand fresh statistics from the Czech government to confirm the extent to which Romani children, along with other marginalized groups, are still being channeled into separate schools with substandard curriculum. The Committee should also ask for detailed information on how inclusive education measures are being funded and implemented.

For more information contact:
Sinan Gökçen
RRC Media and Communications Officer
sinan.gokcen@errc.org
+36.30.500.1324

Jonathan Birchall
Senior Communications Officer, Open Society Justice Initiative
jbirchall@justiceinitiative.org
+1-212-548-0958