The Council of Europe has expressed concern at the level of discrimination against Roma communities in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, urging authorities to do more to combat segregation.
The council's European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) detailed the lack of steps taken to integrate Roma communities in the Czech Republic as well as the need for a crackdown on gender-oriented discrimination towards the LGBTI community. A report published by the Commissioner for Human Rights examined similar issues in Slovakia.
The ECRI report on the Czech Republic expressed "serious concern" at the potency of discrimination against the Roma in the country, noting that "discrimination and prejudice are still the key factors" in reducing job opportunities for the Roma.
The report also criticizes the government for allowing discrimination against Roma children to continue, arguing that segregated "Roma only" schools, offering a worse quality of education, continued to exist and no transfers of students from these to other schools appear to have taken place.
The report also described the reinforcement of negative biases towards the Roma in media reports that focused on conflict between Roma communities and Czech mainstream society.
"A large part of reporting about Roma is comprised of news of anti-Roma marches, increasing Roma criminality and the growing anti-Roma sentiment of the majority population," the report reads.
The ECRI also condemned the government for doing nothing to relocate a large pig farm away from a state-recognized site commemorating Roma victims of the Holocaust near the town of Lety. Campaigners have requested the pig farm be moved since 1998.
The report on neighbouring Slovakia urged the government to tackle continued physical violence against the Roma, raising concern about "the frequent allegations of excessive use of force by police officers during raids carried out in Roma settlements."
While the report concedes that a large proportion of these incidents are not reported and figures are not readily available, it used an example of an incident in which all 10 officers were acquitted of guilt in February, despite being involved in an incident where six Roma boys aged 10-16 were detained in the town of Košice and were "forced to strip naked, kiss and slap each other."
The report also urged the government to halt the "chronic, pervasive segregation of Roma children in the education system" in Slovakia.
On segregation toward the LGBTI community, the ECRI report on the Czech Republic reported largely positively on the level of equality in the country, praising the "broad tolerance for LGBTI persons in the country". In Slovakia, however, the situation was less positive, with a poll of LGBTI persons indicating that 52 percent of LGBTI Slovaks felt that they had been discriminated on the grounds of their sexual orientation in the past year.
The report stressed the need to reverse "the growing negative rhetoric and hate speech directed against LGBTI persons."
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