Without effective government action, future bleak for Czech Roma minority
The Romanies, or Roma, are the Czech Republic’s biggest minority. The relations between Roma and the majority population have long been troubled but recently took a turn for the worse. The community is outraged by the rise in extremist and neo-Nazi movements. For the first time ever, Romany NGOs are organizing a nationwide protest against extremism that will take place on Sunday.
Ivan Gabal: “We have moved away from a period when the problems of the Roma community were marginalized towards an ethnic conflict between extreme right wing, or neo-Nazi movements and the Roma community. Their socially excluded enclaves are located mainly in the regions of northern Bohemia and northern Moravia. All of a sudden, what we see is not only extremist movements related to similar organizations in Germany and overseas, but also an extreme right wing political body with ambitions to get into the Czech and European Parliaments. Obviously, this political goal fuels the conflict. Last but not least, the long-term unresolved problems of excluded Roma communities frustrated a lot of people living in the neighbourhoods of these communities, and this is probably the largest group of supporters of the extreme political movements.”
Would you agree that what we are witnessing is in fact two phenomena: one is the situation of the Romany community, and the other is a rise in extremist movements as such?
Gabriela Hrabáňová: “I would definitely agree. As we have heard, the situation of the Romanies and their exclusion was underestimated. Their exclusion and marginalization is now attracting attention from outside, and that’s in fact the point where these extremist parties, especially now during the economic crisis, are getting support for their right wing ideas, and unfortunately they are also receiving support from the general public.”
This year, we’ll mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism. When you look at the Romany community itself, what developments do you see when you compare the state of the community now with the situation 20 years ago?
Gabriela Hrabáňová: “The situation is certainly different. Twenty years ago, the Roma were part of the democratic movement and they were part of the process of bringing Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic towards democracy. So they were part of the system and they were also politically involved. They were contributing to the system as such. During these years, we saw that the Roma moved more to the non-governmental sector, and now with the European Union w e see a bit of a decline.”
The Roma don’t seem to have been able to establish some sort of a respected body that would represent them, some kind of an umbrella organization that would represent them in relation to the state and the majority population. Why do you think that is?
Ivan Gabal: “As we have mentioned, there were several – I think about eight to fifteen – Roma MPs in the federal Czechoslovak Parliament and in both national Parliaments. They had a clear intention to organize themselves. But later on, economic transition took the upper hand, and what Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic went through was basically a large scale restructuring of the economy which diminished opportunities for unqualified labour, hitting heavily the former heavy industrial areas and emphasizing individual performance, higher education and generally the ability to compete on the open labour market. In all these aspects, the number of employment opportunities for non-qualified Roma declined. Their educational insufficiency limited their ability to get new jobs and their competitiveness on the labour market was lower. I have to say that communist Czechoslovakia had compulsory employment and everybody had to be employed, including every member of the Roma community. But then this was replaced with free labour market. So what we now see are not only enclaves with 80 to 90 percent of unemployed Roma people; we see a new generation being born into a situation when nobody works in the family. It’s a social devastation connected to a certain ethnic group. So the point is that once we completed this transition, we now have to care much more about the cohesion of the society and about those who were unsuccessful in this move. This task is not unknown; what is unknown is the fact that the market itself is not going to solve this problem. So we need strong and new government policies.”
How has the majority Czech population changed in viewing the Roma? There have been recurring opinion polls that always show that very few Czechs would like Roma neighbours for example. Has the majority population changed at all in this respect?
Kateřina Hrubá: “I think that in general, the situation has gotten worse. I think that the level of open and latent racism is still very high. What I have seen in my work in the last five years is that the situation of Romany families is distinctly worse; their situation concerning housing, education, financial debt issues and systematic discrimination by state authorities is getting worse.”
One great concern that has changed, at least technically, is education. Under much pressure, the Czech Republic abolished in 2006 what was known as “special schools”, that is schools designed for incapacitated children where Romany children were often sent just because of their origin. Has the change helped at all?
Ivan Gabal: “There were Roma kids who were pushed out of the regular elementary schooling system without their families’ consent, in a clear act of discrimination. The finding [of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg] brought a lot of attention to the educational system in the Czech Republic concerning the inequalities of Roma girls and boys. Recently, the Czech government invested into a large scale research of inequalities of educational opportunities and did some comparisons, and the results are really alarming. We can say in general that Roma girls and boys only have a 50 percent chance of completing their elementary schooling with the classmates they started with in first grade. So we see really deep inequalities. This is our future, and the future is another generation without high school education and higher qualification. This is something where I think the Czech society in general expects a major change. If there is, and I think there is, a common hope.”
Kateřina Hrubá: “I would like to react to this. I would dare to disagree with Mr Gabal on some points. In our opinion, many Roma children still end up in schools with special education programmes, i.e. in schools for mentally disabled children, without proper reasons. Parents’ consent cannot be formal; it must be informed consent. In many cases, parents give their consent but in reality they don’t know what it means for their child’s education. I also think that the parents’ consent has become a magical formula; it’s one of the conditions required by law for transferring a child to a special school. Another condition, for example, is a proper examination in a psychological centre. But on the ground, we see situations on a daily basis where the psychological profile of the child is missing or is very poorly done, let’s say. For instance, one of them said that the child was slow.”
What do you think should be done for the majority population so that they see there is a serious need for change?
Social exclusion is an area where the extremists are scoring many points – what is the problem there? Why are Romas being pushed out and end up living in excluded areas?
Kateřina Hrubá: “Well what we see in the field is that the municipalities themselves push out or expel these unwanted, and as they like to call them “un-adaptable” people to the fringe of towns and cities. So in many cases the process of segregation was launched by the towns themselves and in relation to the extremist activities it is evident that is very dangerous for the Roma people to be concentrated in such locations because the neo-Nazis know very well where to go.”
Is there a way out of this? Mr. Gabal talked about what the fundamentals of any future policy should be – how about housing?
Kateřina Hrubá: “Well, as a lawyer I still believe that legal measures are important. I hope that in a democratic and legally consistent state victims should turn to the law for protection. One of the problems is that for the Roma it is totally inaccessible. So in our organization we try to solve some strategic cases in order to show the Roma people that it is worth fighting for their rights through the legal system and on the other hand to show the state authorities and the judiciary that it is perfectly normal for Roma people to fight for their rights in court.”
Ivan Gabal: “I would agree completely that we did not use legal instruments to stop municipal bodies building up a large-scale real estate business out of the devastation of this group. Because what we observed is a huge business on the one hand and utter poverty on the other leading to Roma organized crime, prostitution, money-laundering and all that. And obviously in these ghettoes there is a lot of social frustration among those people who are just trying to sustain their ordinary lives based on employment, income etc. What we cannot solve by law is the conversion of this frustration into a parliamentary vote for extremists. So basically we are for sure facing a new situation – having extremists well-seated in Parliament and converting their extremist opinions on how these problems should be solved into parliamentary policy. So I would say that legal instruments, the use of legal instruments is one side of the coin, the other is going to be a political battle for an effective implementation of positive integration policies through the education system, through employnment schemes. This is where – and I am sorry to say this –the current government failed completely. They failed to deliver on their own promises to establish an agency which would launch these programmes, they did not deliver European structural funding schemes for the reconstruction of housing in these areas and they did not deliver an anti-discrimination law which was blocked by part of the governing coalition and the president. If we learn from this failure then we can move ahead, but we have to keep in mind that there is a huge frustrated voters potential which extreme right-wing parties will want to capitalize on. This might be a new situation for the Czech environment. So we should make anti-extremist policies real and alongside this implement real education and integration policies step-by-step for a period of twenty, thirty years. A determined government is what we lack.”
Are you concerned at all there might be a violent response by the Roma to this situation? We have heard calls for neighbourhood vigilante groups to be established and so on…
Gabriela Hrabáňová: “I think there is definitely space for this kind of growth, of unification and looking for common interests. Maybe this is a turning point that will give the Roma strength in pushing for concrete action.”
Kateřina Hrubá: “I would like to say that what I personally appreciate about this monitoring and vigilante groups is that these people will be monitoring developments and collecting evidence of racist and extremist behaviour because the state authorities absolutely failed when it came to collecting evidence of this kind which could back a proposal to the Supreme Administrative Court for the ultra-right Workers Party to be dissolved. So I see this as a very brave, clever and sophisticated slap in the face of the state authorities.”
