Fifty-six Kazak-Czechs return to Czech Republic

56 out of 170 Kazak-Czechs were repatriated to the Czech Republic on Thursday as part of an Interior Ministry plan to help remaining ethnic Czechs in Kazakhstan return to their "original" homeland. Two more flights will follow. The Czech community in Kazakhstan is made up of the descendents of family members who left Bohemia in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Last year the Interior Ministry decided to extend resettlement invitations because economic and security conditions for ethnic Czechs in Kazakhstan had grown increasingly worse in recent years. The Kazak-Czechs arriving now follow approximately 650 Czechs from Kazakhstan who relocated back to the Czech Republic in the late 1990s.