On 24 March 2023 a meeting and training of volunteers fighting online hate speech known as ROMAntici took place in Košice, Slovakia. The meeting was attended by law students and other young people from all over Slovakia, who are not indifferent to the hatred spread against Roma on the Internet. Volunteers have been monitoring the…
Category: Nezařazené
Alternative report to CAT about rights of people with disabilities in Slovakia
On Monday 20 March 2023, together with seven civil society partners, we have submitted a joint alternative report to the UN Committee against Torture on the situation of people with disabilities in Slovakia. We informed the Committee about the problems with the criminal legislation in the area of ill-treatment, ineffective deinstitutionalization, problematic legislation in the…
Czech Roma rights activists file criminal complaints against online hate speech
Prague, Brussels, 26 October 2022: Roma Rights activists in Prague have filed criminal complaints for incitement to racial hatred against Roma on social media. The complaints were based on evidence collected by Romani volunteers working on a project with Czech Romani news portal, Romea, and the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC). The complaints were filed with…
Czech authorities inadequately investigated ill-treatment of an asylum-seeker at the Prague airport, held ECtHR
The European Court of Human Rights today partially upheld the application of a Turkish asylum-seeker about his ill-treatment by Czech police during his detention at Prague airport. In the judgment B. Ü. v. Czech Republic, the Strasbourg court held that the Czech General Inspectorate of Security Forces (GISF) had failed to adequately investigate his complaint of…
Conference in Bratislava: Independent Life
On 22 September 2022, the 5th annual Conference called Independent Life was held in Bratislava. The aim of this conference was a discussion on the National Programme for the Development of Living Conditions of Persons with Disabilities in Slovakia. This conference was organised by the Advisory Council for Social Work and the SOCIA Foundation in…
Team of volunteers fights against online hate
On 16 and 17 September, FORUM trained a group of volunteers in Bratislava, whose task will be to monitor and report hate speech against the Roma community on the internet. The team of volunteers is called ROMAntici (in English “ROMAntics”). The training was attended by young people from different parts of Slovakia and some who…
We challenged immigration detention of children before the UN CRC
Forum for Human Rights and Organisation for Aid to Refugees have filed a complaint with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child against Czech Republic in case of a family from Afghanistan who was detained in Czech immigration detention for over a month in 2019. The family argues that by depriving their children…
Webinar: Introducing tools for communication with victims of crime with disabilities
On 17th June 2022 FORUM organized online seminar concerning introducing the tools for communication with victims of crime with disabilities, which were developed within the project “Voices for Justice”. The seminar brought together over 40 participants, including judges, prosecutors, police officers, social workers or people from victim support services. During the seminar, the tools for easier…
Volunteers and lawyers to jointly combat online and offline hate speech against Roma in Slovakia
A project to tackle online hate speech against Roma in Slovakia was launched on 7th June by the Forum for Human Rights (FORUM) and the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC). The project is part of a European Union-funded initiative by the ERRC and its partners to directly challenge and litigate online hate speech in Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. It will…
Young Roma activists resisting online hate speech in the Czech Republic
Prague, Brussels, 16 May 2022: A group of 20 young Roma have come together to take proactive action against online hate speech in the Czech Republic. The group, most of which are students and volunteers, have come together to monitor and report discriminatory speech online, develop content which provides counter narratives, and are building a base…