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Roma Fact

When asked whether they considered that they were stopped by the
police in the last 12 months on the basis of their ethnicity – ‘ethnic profiling’ – in this regard Greece stands out amongst the seven Member States as having a highly policed Roma community that considers its encounters with the police to be discriminatory.

— EU-FRA

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Sterilisation Compensation

Czechoslovakia carried out a policy of sterilization of Roma women, starting in 1973. The dissidents of the Charter 77 denounced it in 1977-78 as a "genocide", but the practice continued through the Velvet Revolution of 1989. A 2005 report by the Czech government's independent ombudsman, Otakar Motejl, identified dozens of cases of coercive sterilization between 1979 and 2001, and called for criminal investigations and possible prosecution against several health care workers and administrators. 1

According to the ERRC - Since 2002, the victims of coercive sterilisation and their representatives have been advocating domestically and internationally, through legal and non-legal means, for recognition of and compensation for the extreme violations of personal dignity and bodily integrity perpetrated in public hospitals against Romani women in your country.

Since 2003, independent international and national human rights monitoring bodies have recommended that the Czech, Hungarian and Slovak governments effectively investigate all alleged cases of coercive sterilisation and provide effective remedies, including compensation and apologies, to the victims.

To date, no Romani woman victimised by coerced sterilisation practices has received an apology for her suffering from her government in Czech Republic, Hungary or Slovakia. In two cases, Czech courts recently have acknowledged the victim’s right to compensation for these violations and, in one case, awarded compensation. However, both verdicts are under appeal and developments at the Czech Supreme Court concerning the three-year statute of limitations render it highly unlikely that an enforceable court decision on compensation will ever be awarded. In light of these developments, the Czech government is the only avenue of redress for these victims. Since its 2006 decision in the A.S. v Hungary case wherein the UN CEDAW Committee recommended the Hungarian government award compensation to a Romani victim of coerced sterilisation no such remedy has been provided. 2