středa 14. prosince 2011

Spanish revolution in the Czech Republic

  Ingrid Romancová
24. Červen 2011


Warning: the author of this essay is not a native English speaker

Everybody knows that something is wrong. People woke up and took streets peacefully all over Europe, even in the Czech Republic. More than half of voters say that there is a big corruption problem. Many groups against corruption are being formed physically and in the cyber-space (NFPK, Veřejnost proti korupci and others) but corruption still violates the social and economic rights of the poor and vulnerable. We want to demonstrate against our government and bankers.

The Czech Republic has a population of 10,3 million people. There are no statistical data to determine how many homeless people currently live here. Some studies show that up to 75,000 people are homeless, and 900,000 people live close to poverty level. The number of distraints skyrocketed last years, with more than one million distraint orders per year. The executor has the legal power to do this without any court order.

When the Czech media are silent, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube takes the spotlight. We heard about The European Revolution from our Spanish schoolmates, friends, and colleagues . We follow them on Twitter, read their blogs, become their fans on Facebook. And still we ask, why the Czech media are silent? There is no news. „Icelandic democracy“ is taboo.

The Czech indignant people have created a Facebook group called „Česká revoluce – Jaro 2011″ (The Czech Revolution – Spring 2011) and they started demonstrating against the government. A few days ago, the founders of the Facebook group received several messages demanding that they either stop protesting or they will be killed. The founders have created some events on Facebook but all of them were deleted.

Czech unions had to postpone transit strike against the government reform after court ban. The strike was based on the right to strike contained in the Constitution of the Czech Republic but despite of this, it was banned by a court injunction upon a request from the Finance Ministry. The reforms of health care and of the tax, pension and welfare systems are ill-conceived without any analysis of the impact on citizens.

Politics and money are placed before people, even in the Czech Republic.