After World War I, the Romani people in Czechoslovakia formed an ethnic community, living on the social periphery of the mainstream Czechoslovakian population.
74, "On the permanent settlement of nomadic and semi-nomadic people"), forcibly limited the movements of those Romani (around 5–10%) who still travelled on a regular basis.
[1] In the same year, the highest organ of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia passed a resolution, the aim of which was to be "the final assimilation of the Gypsy population".
[3] The popular perception of Romani even before 1989 was of lazy, dirty criminals who abused social services and posed a significant threat to majority values.
[7] A hospital in Vitkovice, Ostrava, apologised to a Romani woman who was sterilised after her second caesarean, but a request for a compensation of 1 million Czech crowns was rejected by the court.