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“Forgotten Victims” were called to memory in Prague


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Дата публикации: 
08.05.2010

A conference “Forgotten Victims” focused on the problem of hate crimes and the victims of hate violence and assistance of the state and non-governmental organizations, was held on April 22 – 23, 2010. The conference took place in the Goethe-Institut, Prague, under the auspices of the Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer together with the Forum 2000 Foundation, the Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future" (Foundation EVZ), In IUSTITIA o.s. and Kulturbüro Sachsen e.V. Among the participants there were experts from Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland. A major part of the conference was dedicated to the presentation of the results of the research project "Hate Crimes – Forgotten Victims" which was conducted in the Czech Republic with the financial assistance of Foundation EVZ. The discussion on the first day concerned the main difficulties in defying and explaining the terms “hate violence” or “hate crime”. At the workshops, the participants discussed such issues as anti-extremist and hate crime legislation, the role of police and their investigation of hate crimes, anti-Semitism as well as problematic inclusion of the Roma minority and the LGBT community. The discussions referred not only to the situation in Prague but touched upon the experience of the countries represented. The second day of the conference was dedicated to hate crime prevention, monitoring of hate crimes and victim assistance. The attempts and experiences from both government and non-government sectors were described. Broad criticism was raised against efficiency of work on these issues but the discussion managed to stay constructive and led to formulating the ways for solving the existing problems. Russian human rights organizations were represented by the SOVA Centre (Moscow), the Anti-discrimination Centre Memorial (St.Petersburg) and Youth Human Rights Movement. After the conference they had an opportunity to talk to their partners from Germany and discuss the possible development of work in victim assistance in Russia. “Integrated victim assistance is almost untouched area for Russian organizations dealing with xenophobia and hate crimes, says Konstantin Baranov from Youth Human Rights Movement. To start it, serious evaluation of the existing international experience and purposeful resource support are needed. That is why this conference turned out to be very worthwhile for us as another opportunity to communicate with our colleagues from Eastern Europe and Germany. The dialogue with the members of the Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future" brought hope that by the end of this year the first projects on assistance to ultra-right violence victims will appear.” It is worth mentioning that the first steps have been done in this direction. E.g. First taken place in the Czech Republic, Poland and the Ukraine the research in the state of hate crime victims was held in Russia. The presentation of its outcomes will be organized at the end of June in Moscow, as well as the panel discussion for the institutions planning to continue work in this sphere. Official report on the conference - http://www.forum2000.cz/en/projects/forgotten-victims/summary/



 

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