Czech Republic Mistreating and Robbing Refugees

[Peter Lemkin]

Note: I live here and can confirm all this [and more] is going on. The Czech Republic has backed all of Hungary's moves re: refugees and even sent them some of their own police to help enforce their fences, etc. I see bumper stickers saying 'thank you Hungary' and none saying the opposite. The President is totally behind Hungary and making any refugee who happens to come here to wish they never had. This is a mean-spirited government and the population is largely behind this mean spiritedness toward 'others', sadly. They've been mistreating the Roma population for all of recorded history and an African friend of mine who is married to a Czech and has permanent residence and a good job was stopped at the train station two weeks ago for the crime of being black and the police asked him where he got the fake ID's [which were real]. Very bad and very sad. I see demonstrations against refugees and few with few persons for helping them here.

Czech Republic Mistreating and Robbing Refugees

October 22, 2015




The United Nations accused the Czech Republic of violating the rights of hundreds of migrants, mostly from Syria, who were detained in "reprehensible" and "degrading" conditions, in a statement released Thursday.
Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said in the statement that "the violations of the human rights of migrants are neither isolated nor coincidental, but systematic: they appear to be an integral part of a policy by the Czech government designed to deter migrants and refugees from entering the country or staying there."
It is at least the third time in recent months that the Czech government has been criticized for its treatment of asylum seekers traveling through the country. In September, rights groups expressed outrage at Czech border police officers for marking the forearms of migrants with numbers reminiscent of the tattoos the Nazis gave to concentration camp detainees. And the Czech president, Milos Zeman, was criticized this week for claiming that migrants who settled in the country would "respect Shariah instead of Czech laws."
The statement released Thursday by the United Nations human rights agency said that migrants, many of them children, has been subjected to treatment in the Czech Republic beyond what they had endured in other Central and Eastern European countries. The agency's statement included the following examples:
Migrants have been detained for 40 days, and in some cases up to 90 days.
The Czech Republic's own justice minister, Robert Pelikan, has described conditions at the detention centers as "worse than in a prison."
Migrants are "routinely strip-searched by the authorities looking to confiscate money."
Migrants are charged $10 a day each to pay for their own detention, a practice described as "particularly reprehensible."
Though they are entitled under international law to challenge their detention in court, migrants do not receive information about free legal representation.
Anna Sabatova, the Czech ombudswoman, has said parents are treated in a "degrading way" in front of their children. And children are "traumatized" by the presence of armed officers.
Migrants have their cellphones confiscated, making it impossible for them to communicate with their families.
The Czech Republic has received more than 800 asylum requests through September, a relatively small number compared with other neighboring countries, such as Germany, which is expected to receive 800,000 this year. Thousands of migrants are traveling through countries in Central and Eastern Europe with the aim of settling in northern Europe, where asylum seekers receive more generous benefits and better treatment.

[Mark A. O'Blazney]

Not as many gold fillings to mine this time. A tragedy about to happen. Not right now, but when "they" try to settle down and find some balance to their existing miserable lives, how shall their hosting country's peers react? It's going to be a different Balkan War this time, I'm afraid. A true test of racial indifference. We must learn to behave. Om shanti.

[Peter Lemkin]

Not as many gold fillings to mine this time. A tragedy about to happen. Not right now, but when "they" try to settle down and find some balance to their existing miserable lives, how shall their hosting country's peers react? It's going to be a different Balkan War this time, I'm afraid. A true test of racial indifference. We must learn to behave. Om shanti.

As disappointed as I am in the Czech political scene since the end of office and then death of Havel, the Czech[oslovaks], for the most part, did NOT go along with the Nazi occupation - though they offered little organized resistance until near the end of the War. [there were sabotage missions, and one famous one called Anthropod in which Heydrich was assassinated on the edge of Prague]. They are a bit xenophobic, and have not over history had many outsiders in their midst, nor tolerated them well; the Jews being perhaps the exception. Prague and a few other smaller towns here were large centers of European Jewish life with little trouble [relatively] from the Czechs or Bohemian Empire before. That, of course, changed when the Nazis came in and all the Jews were moved to Terezin and then on to the extermination camps......

...it was other Eastern European nations that collaborated with the Nazis...not here.

[Peter Lemkin]

Three-fifths of Czechs are dissatisfied with the country's EU membershipand would vote against it in a possible referendum, suggests a pollconducted by the STEM agency, which was released on Friday. It is thelowest public support for the EU that STEM has registered since the CzechRepublic's EU entry in May 2004. According to sociologists, the rising discontent is connected with the current migrant crisis and with Czechs' fear of refugees. At present, a mere 38 percent of peoplewould vote for the EU entry, which is the lowest share so far. Satisfactionwith the EU has considerably decreased even among secondary-school anduniversity graduates, who have traditionally been in favour of EUmembership.

[Peter Lemkin]

Zeman: Most refugees do not deserve compassion

ÄŒTK |
26 October 2015
Prague, Oct 25 (CTK) - Most refugees do not deserve compassion because as a rule, they are young, healthy men with good material conditions, Czech President Zeman said in an interview for the paper blesk.tv yesterday, adding that they only use children as living shields.
Zeman said he was unopposed to the idea of his predecessor, former president Vaclav Klaus, to stage a referendum on the quotas for the mandatory redistribution of the refugees most EU members want to have passed.
Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka (Social Democrats, CSSD) said in reaction to Zeman that the refugees' motivation must not be disputed.
Sobotka said the referendum on the quotas was useless.
It would be more expedient to give the hundreds of million crowns to the people in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, he added.
Zeman said he, too, felt compassion when looking at the children of the refugees coming to Europe.
However, there is the question of why their parents "drag" them along with them, risking their drowning in dinghies.
Zeman said a majority of the refugees were males with "iPads" and "iPhones" who had "thousands of euros and thousands of dollars" in their pockets.
He said with his attitude to the migrants he was only warning of a real danger before which other politicians were closing their eyes.
Zeman dismissed the recent criticism of Czech detention facilities for refugees by United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR), Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al-Hussein and Czech ombudsman Anna Sabatova.
Zeman said with "her militant views" Sabatova only wanted to promote herself.
Sabatova's spokeswoman Iva Hrazdilkova has told CTK the ombudsman was only doing what she had to under the law. She would not comment on Zeman's statements.
Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al-Hussein argued that it was common for Czech authorities to hold the refugees for 40-90 days, making their strip searches in order to gain money from them for the payment of their costs of their stay in the refugee facilities.
Last week, conditions in the refugee centres were criticised as being "worse than in prisons" by Sabatova and by Czech NGOs working with refugees.
Zeman said the Islamophobia for which he was criticised was opposition to Islamic radicalism.
Zeman said the Lisbon Treaty on the EU did not include any single word about the refugee quotas, only about a help to the EU countries facing an increased influx of foreigners.
Klaus wants the centre-left government of Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka to "legalise" its position on the EU decision on the quotas in a referendum.
The government is against the quotas, but it is not ready to turn to court over them unlike the neighbouring Slovakia.
Zeman said Slovakia's legal complaint about the European Commission should be joined.
MEP Stanislav Polcak (Mayors and Independents, STAN) told Czech Television yesterday that with their current rhetoric, both Zeman and Klaus wanted to "cover up their current and past problems."
Zeman has been unable to gain the security clearance for the president's chief of staff Vratislav Mynar, Polcak said.
Klaus wants his controversial amnesty to be forgotten, he added.
European Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality Vera Jourova (ANO) warned of the people able to influence the public opinion including Zeman and Klaus who may foment xenophobia and present a negative attitude to the refugees as a danger to society.

[Peter Lemkin]

Prague, Oct 25 (CTK) - The number of socially excluded localities in the Czech Republic, inhabited by 115,000 people, mainly Romanies, has doubled to the current 600 since 2006, Radek Jiranek, director of the Social Inclusion Agency, told Czech Television (CT) yesterday.
The number should lower in the future although Europe is facing a migrant crisis, Jiranek said.
"The growth in the number of socially excluded localities is mainly due to the global economic crisis, increased unemployment and trafficking in poverty," Jiranek said.
"The poverty is made possible by the state that, acting in good belief, allowed the operation of dormitories for the socially weak, but the state contribution to the housing is often abused," Jiranek said.
Socially excluded localities are located in 300 towns and villages.
With regard to the towns over 20,000 inhabitants, the biggest number of such places is in north Bohemia and north Moravia, CT said, referring to its own data.
In Litvinov, north Bohemia, some 20 percent of the total population number live on the fringes of society.
In Jirkov, north Bohemia, it is 14 percent and in Most and Usti nad Labem, it is 8 percent.
The towns of Karvina, north Moravia, and Chomutov, north Bohemia, have 7 percent of poor neighbourhoods, Bohumin, north Moravia, 6 percent and Havirov, north Moravia, and Sokolov, west Bohemia, have 4 percent of them.
Jiranek said he presumed that after the social housing law, now drafted, were passed, the situation would improve.
"It is its target to have social housing for socially excluded people spread evenly in the towns, to prevent the occurrence of further ghettoes," Jiranek said.
The law is to take effect in January 2017.
Jiranek said he did not believe the number of socially excluded localities would increase due to the migrant crisis.
"I cannot see any problem in this. There are small numbers and in the previous migration waves, the Czech Republic managed to integrate the newcomers or return them to their country of origin," he added.
The Social Inclusion Agency cooperates with 36 towns and villages across the country. It is one of the departments of the Human Rights Section at the Czech Government Office.

My note: pardon the horrible English. This is typical here that even the largest Press Agency can't or won't hire a professional translator to put out press releases in English, and likely uses google translate to save money. Only about 12 million people speak Czech; 400 million speak English as their first language, and about 1 billion speak English as their first or second language, 2 billion can read some English.

[Magda Hassan]

It's really sad isn't it? Especially when you consider that Czechs have wanted to take asylum during the war and in the 60's. Short memories. ::face.palm::

[Peter Lemkin]

Some three thousand people have been demonstrating against immigrants inPrague, Brno and several other cities across the Czech Republic onWednesday. Most of the gatherings were organised by the initiative Blockagainst Islam and the populist part Dawn-National Coalition. In Prague,police in riot gear had to step in to separate the anti-Islamicdemonstrators from the supporters of migration. Among the people attendingthe gathering in Prague were represenatives of the German anti-Islamicmovement Pegida, including the leader Lutz Bachmann. The biggest gathering,attended by some 1,500 people, took place in Brno.

[Peter Lemkin]

The country's human rights minister and former presidential candidateJiří Dienstbier has strongly criticized the head of state Miloš Zeman,charging he had thrown support behind "hate groups" in Czech society.On Tuesday, the anniversary of the fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia, MrZeman shared the stage with members of the Bloc Against Islam at Prague'sAlbertov, a move which Mr Dienstbier said "crossed all lines". Thegroup is strongly anti-immigration, using a crossed out mosque and minaretas its logo. Mr Dienstbier said that some of the president's paststatements were xenophobic, had spread fear in society, and helped fuelfascistic sentiments. The president's spokesman, Jiří Ovčáček,reacted to the criticism by saying the minister had "once again" shownscorn for regular "citizens, their opinions and concerns".

[Magda Hassan]

Was it Czech republic I read about today that was going to put under 24 hour surveillance every Muslim living there? It may not be true but I did read about it and wanted to check it out to see if there was any truth to it.