Czechs seeking Gypsy attacks mastermind

Published: Aug. 17, 2009 at 4:13 PM

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- Czech police are seeking an ultra-rightist who likely orchestrated racially motivated assaults on Gypsies, a Czech lawyer said.

Four men, all in their mid-20s, last week were charged in an arson attack that police described as the "attempted murder" of a Gypsy family, but attorney Markus Pape told the Czech news agancy CTK the suspects were mere pawns.

Police are now focusing those who gave the orders, Pape said.

Martin Pecina, Czech interior minister Sunday suggested the arson was connected with the far-right Workers' Party DS, but party leader Tomas Vandas denied any links.

The four suspects are charged with tossing gasoline bottles that sparked fire in the village of Vitkov near Ostrava in the northeastern Czech Republic in April.

Three Gypsies, or Romanies as they are formally called, were injured. One of them, a 2-year-old girl remains hospitalized with serious burns on 80 percent of her body.

The four men are suspected of supporting ultra-rightists and the Czech neo-Nazi National Resistance, a group banned by a Czech court, CTK quoted experts in extreme nationalist groups as saying.

Wild East Capitalism and the Gypsy Exodus

July 29, 2009
Brian Kenety

The Czech Republic last year eclipsed war-torn countries like Somalia, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka to become the seventh-biggest source of asylum seekers in Canada and at last count — with some 3,000 claims pending, up from a handful back in 2006 — had skyrocketed to second place, behind Mexico.

Canada’s immigration minister, Jason Kenney, argued that most refugee claimants from Mexico were in fact middle-class economic migrants, and also pointed to “bogus” refugee claims from the Czech Republic, most filed by members of the country’s Roma, or gypsy, community.

Ottawa slapped visas on both countries on July 15. Just a couple weeks later, Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board publicly released the second of two reports from a March fact-finding mission to the Czech Republic, noting the Roma minority face “negative societal perceptions (including discrimination), inadequate housing, poor education, high unemployment, as well as far-right extremist activism.”

Much has been written about the immediate causes for the massive influx of Czech Roma asylum seekers to the Great White North — which began after Ottawa lifted the visa requirement in late 2007 — with the focus on the intensification of hate crimes in the Czech Republic over the past year, coinciding with unprecedented coordination between far-right political groups and skinheads.

Ales Horvath, a Roma businessman from the town of Pardubice who has been badly beaten twice by skinheads, says the constant — and rising — threat of violence pushed hundreds of Roma to pack their families off to Canada. “We are decent people. But we can’t go out into society like normal people,” Horvath told me. “Discrimination is so common here that people don’t even recognize it as discrimination. It has become normal. Society is pushing us into a corner more and more.”

In the international press — and to a large degree also the Czech press — debate has centered on the question of whether the Roma heading for Canada are legitimate refugees or simply economic migrants (or opportunists seeking to tap into a more generous social welfare system). But the role of capitalism is fanning the flames of extremism — by which I do not mean the catch-all explanation of the global financial crisis — has gone largely ignored.

The new ghettos

Widespread discrimination aside (and it’s no small thing), over the past 20 years, the Roma were literally pushed to the edge of Czech society. Along with the break-neck privatization (and corrupt practices) that gave birth to the term “the Wild East,” an unprecedented building boom in the country has lead to the creation of new Roma ghettos.

Before the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the Roma were far more integrated into Czech society, at least in terms of proximity, with white Czechs and Roma families living side by side, albeit not without tension. By the late 1990s, however, municipalities both large and small began in earnest to sell off properties, including the housing estates in which many Roma were living.

In 2006, prominent sociologist Ivan Gabal and a team of researchers released a study showing that nearly one-third of the Roma population lived in 250 new neighborhoods — usually run-down housing estates or dilapidated buildings on the outskirts of towns — that had come into being following the massive privatization of public housing in the 1990s.

Many of the Roma who found themselves in these ghettos, often in high-unemployment regions, had been evicted (along with “problematic inhabitants,” such as rent defaulters) from neighborhoods in Prague and other big cities undergoing free-market gentrification. Within these ghettos, Gabal’s researchers found that more than 95 percent of inhabitants were out of work.

Such ghettos make visible and easy targets for right-wing extremists. Such was the case with Janov, an isolated complex of neglected high rises in the Litvinov region, where neo-Nazis marching in step with members of fringe far-right Workers’ Party clashed with Roma, capturing headlines on both sides of the Atlantic.

“The last half year has been marked by attempts to openly attack Roma communities, preceded by political gatherings, in particular of the Workers Party — that is new, new, new,” said Gwendolyn Albert, who writes an annual country report on the Czech Republic for the European Network Against Racism, in a recent interview.

“Czech public officials, from mayors to ministers, have taken a page from the tactics of fringe neo-Nazi parties for political gain,” Albert says. “They are specifically targeting the issue of the proportionally large number of Roma citizens on welfare in this country as part of their populist political agendas.”

The Czech government is now considering a ban on the Workers Party and another extremist group, the National Party, which during the June elections for the European Parliament (incredibly) broadcast a video on Czech public television calling for “the final solution” to the Roma “question.” But for those trapped eking out a living in the new ghettos, the chance for a new life in Canada is another dream squashed.

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Czech neo-Nazis air anti-Gypsy TV ad

Published: May 21, 2009 at 10:42 AM

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, May 21 (UPI) -- The Czech public television network said Thursday it will sue a far-right party for submitting an anti-Gypsy racist ad so it will not have to air it again.

Czech television received the National Party video clip, which promises a "final solution" of the Gypsy problem, and broadcast it Wednesday, the first day of a publicity campaign for the European Parliament elections in June, Prague Radio said.

Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer condemned the anti-Romany video as illegal, the radio said.

A Czech television spokesperson said the station complied with a law that orders it to air all ads received from political parties in the pre-election period.

The spokesperson said the ad will not air again and the network will file a lawsuit against the National Party, accusing it of racism.

Michael Kocab, Czech minister for minorities and human rights said the station should have obeyed the criminal code, which bans distributing racial hate messages, instead of observing the election law.

Interior Minister Jan Pecina said he plans to try to ban the far-right National party.

Gypsy vigilantes operate in Czech Republic

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, May 4 (UPI) -- Gypsy vigilantes have been deployed in some regions of the Czech Republic in a bid to oppose rising extremism, Prague Radio said.

Gypsy activists, who call themselves Romanies, staged the first ever countrywide peaceful protests Sunday, sparked by an arson assault in mid-April on a Romany family that left a 2-year-old girl hospitalized with serious injuries, the radio said Monday.

Several thousand Gypsy protesters gathered Sunday in 14 Czech towns to demonstrate against discrimination of Gypsies.

In Chomutov, a town 50 miles northwest of Prague, police had to intervene when several dozen ultra-right extremists, shouting Nazi slogans, attacked one of the Romany marches.

Romany activists said they will not hesitate to fight back if their lives are threatened by neo-Nazis. Vigilante groups are now operating in some parts of the country, the radio said.

Czech Gypsies to protest across country

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, April 24 (UPI) -- Activists of the Romany, or Gypsy, minority in the Czech Republic said they plan countrywide protests against rising extremism and discrimination.

Leaders of the minority, estimated at 300,000 members by Czech authorities, said the protests will be organized in some 15 towns and cities on Sunday, May 3, Prague Radio said Friday.

The protests are coming amidst increased political tensions sparked by the last week's neo-Nazi march in the northern Czech town of Usti nad Labem and the firebombing of a Romany family's home in the villlage of Vitkov, in the northeast region of Opava.

A 2-year-old girl was in critical condition with burns on 80 percent of her body after a petrol bomb was thrown into her parents' home. Her parents were also hospitalized with serious injuries.

The Romany activists have offered a reward for information on those responsible for the Vitkov attack, Prague Radio said.

Downturn hits Romania's tinkers

BBC News

Scrap metal was once a lucrative trade for Eastern European Gypsies but as Nick Thorpe reports, this has been devastated by the global economic crisis.
Melting snow has turned the unpaved roads of Zizin into streams of mud, ankle deep.

Wading through it, in search of drier ground, your ears grow accustomed quickly to the gentle murmur of the wintry village, dogs barking, cocks crowing, neighbours calling out to each other through hazel fences.

There are sharper sounds too, like the fireworks set off by children in far-off cities.

But there is no money for such frivolities in this predominantly Gypsy village.

The sounds are made by bull-whips, lengths of rope with horse-hair tied in knots at the end.

Scrap scarcity

Cracked incessantly by the kids at the end of streets, in the yards of houses, but above all on a small hill which overlooks the village.

Splitting the sky apart for a split-second, as though in the space created, poverty might be transformed into wealth, tin into gold.

Zizin - the name itself sounds like sheets of tin falling on tin. And that is how many of the Gypsies here made a living, until the global financial crisis struck.

Like millions of scrap-metal hunters and gatherers around the world, the Gypsies of eastern Europe did well from the tinkers' trade in recent years, as the price of metals soared.

A huge hunger for metal in the construction industries of India, and China in particular, fuelled the price rises. But that has all changed now.

Bridge stolen

Gypsies and non-Gypsies alike snapped up every scrap as it fell by the wayside, and today, it seems, there is little left for anyone to gather up.

As scrap became scarcer in recent years, the theft of metal became more common in eastern Europe and beyond.

One of the first Soviet locomotives in Ukraine, all 14 tonnes of it, and a metal bridge which connected a village in the west of the country to the outside world, were the most brazen thefts.

In Hungary, the re-opening of the Freedom Bridge over the Danube in Budapest, closed for many months for repairs, was postponed after thieves in eastern Hungary went off with hundreds of steel girders prepared for it.

The guttering and even the roofs of churches, and bronze plaques to Holocaust victims have all disappeared overnight.

And copper wire, used in railway signalling, was especially prized. Sixty three trains were disrupted in one day alone near Prague, when a length went missing between two main city stations.

Prices plummet

Both the Czech Republic and Hungary have now passed laws imposing strict controls on the operation of scrap metal yards. Hungary alone has 20,000.

Now everyone selling is obliged to record their identities, and full details of their loads.

But the new legislation may prove redundant. The economic downturn means people are not spending on scrap metal. Prices paid for it have fallen in some places by 90%.

From Zizin, Ion Ocelas, a father of five children with a sixth on the way, used to make the trip to the scrapyard in the nearest city, Brasov, almost daily.

Now he says it is hardly worth it. He used to get 33 euro cents (£0.29) for each kilogramme he brought in, now he is getting three cents.

Even if his horse-drawn wagon was piled high, he would only come back with a handful of small coins, less than a beggar might make for a day's pleading on the pavement outside the famous Black Church in Brasov.

"I'd like to work as a welder," he says, as he restacks the last of his metal collection - the twisted blue bonnet of a car, pots and pans, and something white and spiked, like the head of a metallic thistle - "but there's no work for welders round here, still less for Gypsy welders"

"People here have no time to think about the future," says Father Raia, an Orthodox priest of Gypsy origin, when I ask him what hope he sees. "They have to eat today."

At the main scrapyard in Brasov, buried deep in waste land beneath the girders of a new road, the manager refuses to talk.

But on the western outskirts of the Romanian capital, Bucharest, the owner of another yard, Ciprian Porumb, is happy to unburden his concerns.

Future fears

"I used to get the $450 (£300) a tonne for this," he waves his hand at a mountain of scrap, still being unloaded from lorries.

"That fell to about $150 (£100), but I dare to hope it will improve again soon."

As he speaks, a four-piece Gypsy street band, blasting on trombones and drums, marches boisterously by, serenading the ladies at the upstairs windows of the drab flats which overlook the scrapyard.

Back in Zizin, Ion's seven-year-old daughter, Rebecca, is feverish. The doctor has been called.

We leave the village as darkness falls, and an ambulance siren mixes with another orchestra of children crying, horses braying, dogs barking and always the whips, cracking in the frost.

EUROPE: Roma Pay the Price for Far-Right Rise

By Zoltán Dujisin

BUDAPEST, Dec 29 (IPS) - The alarm bell is ringing in Central Europe: as the region braces itself for an economic crisis, extremism grows and gains popular sympathy by targeting the Roma.

The collapse of social rights in post-communist central-eastern Europe has been most harsh on the Roma, a minority that is believed to have migrated to Europe from India since the 14th century.

While anti-Roma prejudices are strong in Central Europe, so far no political force has managed to garner support by rallying the population against them. But extremists now see a window of opportunity in mobilising anti-gypsy feelings.

"The gypsy theme doesn't create political divisions, it's an everyday thing for people on the left or right, and they (extremists) are trying to use this to gain some power outside of politics," Hungarian anthropologist Gergo Pulay told IPS.

This is the case with the Hungarian Guard, a quasi-paramilitary group created in August 2007 and whose 2,000 or so members get physical training and promise to preserve Hungarian traditions and protect its citizens.

In October Czech extremists followed suit, setting up the pseudo-paramilitary National Guard, also about 2,000 member strong.

Conditions are set for a spiral of violence: extremists accuse their countries' police forces of failing to protect citizens from "gypsy crime", while members of Roma communities say they are ready to set up their own militias to protect themselves.

Several provocative marches by Hungarian Guard members in Roma-inhabited settlements have coincided with sudden new attacks on Roma inhabiting Hungarian villages. The Roma constitute 6 percent of Hungary's 10 million population.

In one incident in November, grenades were launched into a Roma-inhabited house in Pecs, 250 km south of Budapest, killing two adults and injuring two children. The Hungarian police was criticised for ruling out the possibility of a racist motive in the attack before launching an investigation. They later retracted the statement.

Such scenes are also becoming familiar to Czechs following successive clashes between extremists and the Roma in the Janov housing estate in Litvinov in the northern Czech Republic.

In one incident, supporters of the far-right Workers Party tried to invade the heavily Roma-inhabited estate Nov. 17. Policemen, extremists and locals were involved in the clashes where Molotov cocktails were thrown and police cars put on fire.

Many were appalled by the large number of elderly locals who sided with the extremists, signalling that far-right extremism is not isolated. Encouraged by signs of local support, Czech far-right supporters have spoken of further action.

There are some 300 Roma ghettos across the country. Many of them have appeared as a result of a recent spree in evictions. Approximately 80,000 inhabitants of these ghettos are often unemployed, welfare-dependent and uneducated.

Often they are moved to better quality but more isolated flats, hindering their integration in mainstream society.

In the neighbourhoods where they are placed, they are usually received with fear and suspicion by locals, feelings fed by the many Czech politicians who express blatantly anti-Roma opinions.

"I am absolutely disgusted by the latest events in Litvinov and especially by the lack of reaction from the Czech political elite," Cyril Koky from the government council for Roma affairs told media in November.

Politicians in the region, and especially in the Czech Republic, have reacted mildly to anti-gypsy incidents. They tend to depict the Roma as living off welfare and as having been overprotected under the defunct communist state.

"If they take welfare benefits and don't work, they are more likely to keep stealing from people," Istvan Kovacs, one of the few protesters willing to speak to journalists at one of the far-right rallies in Budapest told IPS.

He denies that the clearly anti-Semitic and anti-gypsy utterances of younger protesters around him are fundamentally racist. "We just need to help them become better Hungarians," he says with a kind smile.

The Hungarian Guard denies any involvement in the latest incidents. It boasts some "honorary" Jews and Roma among its ranks, and handed out Christmas presents to Roma children to fence off accusations of racism.

Extreme-right movements are beginning to relinquish Nazi symbols, opting instead for more home-grown imagery and ideological patterns, while increasing international cooperation with similar movements.

In a region where left-wing politics is stigmatised due to a failure to deal with the heritage of socialism, the anti-globalisation mood has been channelled by a nationalistic right that accuses domestic elites of selling out state property to multinational corporations.

Authorities in the region have promised to monitor the activities of such groups, especially paramilitary ones, but they have become highly skilled in avoiding breaching the law, and legal shortcomings mean that even a ban can be easily circumvented.

Moreover, far-right groups like those in Hungary intimidate opponents by publishing the full names, telephones and addresses of lawyers, judges or journalists who get in their way.

In Slovakia a far-right party has even made it into the governing coalition in 2006, and since then racially motivated crimes have increased exponentially in what some consider the result of the state legitimating xenophobic views. (END/2008)

Gypsy kids herded into Czech schools for disabled

By KAREL JANICEK – 22 hours ago

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) — Roma children face severe discrimination in the Czech Republic and are still being segregated into schools for those with mental disabilities, a rights group said Thursday.

The charge comes a year after the European Court of Human Rights demanded that the country stop the practice.

Roma children "continue to be dramatically over-represented in practical primary schools that follow a special curriculum for mentally disabled pupils," the European Roma Rights Center said in a report.

Czech Education Minister Ondrej Liska said it could take three to five years to solve the problem but admitted that the children of Roma, or Gypsies, "are not less talented and do not have fewer abilities than the others."

Rights advocates said, however, that officials at all levels are reluctant to address the issue.

"What is needed here is a real action to bring Roma children into mainstream schools," said Robert Kushen of the Budapest-based Roma Rights Center. "I hope we can see that commitment, but I'm skeptical."

Roma are one of Europe's largest, poorest and fastest-growing minorities. An estimated 7 million to 9 million live in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and other countries.

They remain at risk of social exclusion, despite government programs to integrate them. The European Union has set aside millions in education, housing and job aid to help.

In November 2007, the European Court of Human Rights demanded the Czech Republic take steps to end the discrimination against Roma youths in schools after Roma students sued. The ruling acknowledged that "other European states had had similar difficulties."

Failure to comply with the ruling could lead to a new court case and possible fines or sanctions.