“Golden Barb” award highlights failures in integration of foreigners
The Golden Barb is the name of an award that the Prague-based NGO Centre for Integration of Foreigners hands out for the worst contribution to the field of integration of foreigners. It also gives out the Naděžda prize for the best practice or policy in the field. This year’s awards were presented on Thursday evening. Jan Richter spoke to the centre’s Vladislav Gunther after the ceremony.
“We have three categories this year; the first is the Big Barb – Velká Osina – and this award was handed to the Foreign Ministry for its practices and policies in visa and related matters, particularly in relation to countries such as Vietnam. Another award is the Local Barb, which focuses on local issues, perhaps with some general overlap. The award went to the foreigner police station in Zdiby, which is a town outside Prague.”
“This police station got the award for their approach to foreigners who are technically their clients. We met several people who were really misinformed and misled by the police and in some cases the local foreigner police didn’t follow legal procedures when dealing with foreigners – quite the opposite, they broke their own rules and even the law in certain cases, so that’s why.”
The major prize is called the Golden Barb- who did it go to this year?
“It’s very closely related to the third category, the Statement of the Year. It went to Mr Václav Henych from the Interior Ministry. If I may translate the statement, it went something like, there are so many Czech citizens who break the law that it’s inconceivable that we should accept foreigners.”
You also award one positive prize called Naděžda. What kind of prize is it and who won?
“This is a new category that we established this year because we accepted some criticism that the awards were only negative, and that we should look at it from another point of view as well. So we set up the Malá Naděžda award for the best practices we think are hopeful. Naděžda means hope in Russian. The award went to the Ministry of Education, which was interesting because in the past the ministry was criticized a lot for its approach to the integration of foreigners. We can say that the criticism and the Golden Barb the ministry received last year made some impact and changed some things. One of the positive changes there is that they established a department for equal opportunities in education.”
