It's hard to know where to start when describing the present-day situation of the Roma (gypsy) minority in the Czech Republic. Tension between white Czechs and their fellow Roma citizens has been a cause for international concern throughout the 1990s. First there was the legislation enacted upon the 1993 breakup of Czechoslovakia, which assigned Slovak citizenship to the vast majority of Roma and earned the Czech Republic harsh criticism from the European Union. Then, in 1997, fleeing a dramatic rise in skinhead violence and 80% unemployment, Czech Roma attempted to emigrate in large numbers to destinations such as Canada and Great Britain, where they then applied for asylum. Canada granted asylum to some applicants but ultimately responded by reinstituting a visa regime for all Czech citizens, and Great Britain has threatened to do the same. Next there was the infamous attempt by white Czechs in the North Bohemian town of Ústí nad Labem to build a wall between themselves and their Roma neighbors, which again received international attention and harsh criticism. Most recently there is the case before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg charging the Czech educational system with disproportionately assigning Roma children to schools for the mentally retarded. And finally, there is the ongoing matter of the former WWII-era concentration camp for gypsies in the South Bohemian town of Lety, the site of which is occupied to this day by an industrial pig farm. A request by Czech Human Rights Commissioner Petr Uhl to remove the pig farm from the site was voted down by the Czech government in 1999.
It is disturbing to follow the reaction of the Czech media, government and general public to these events, as there is a tendency to drastically minimize the suffering the Roma undergo and have undergone. To cite just a few examples, from the subtle to the egregious: on the placard at the site of the memorial to the Roma who died at Lety, the number of prisoners who passed through there between 1942-43 is given as "more than 1,300." However, the number given in David Crowe's 1995 History of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia for the same time period is indeed "more": a total of 7,980 Roma. (Crowe’s source for this number is the 1981 publication of Czech historian Ctibor Nečas). Likewise, at an exhibit of artworks about Lety by US-based artist Barbara Scotch, organized at Prague Castle under the auspices of a project sponsored by Czech President Václav Havel, "The Holocaust Phenomenon," there is a significant Czech translation error in the artist's statement. Where the English original correctly calls Lety a "concentration camp," the Czech "translation" calls Lety a "detention camp" (internační tábor). Roma activists in the Czech Republic have filed war crimes charges against those Lety guards and former Protectorate employees who are still alive today. The result: zero prosecutions; the infamous Lety camp guard Josef Hejduk has since died a peaceful death. Meanwhile, of all the allegedly racially motivated murders of Roma that have been committed in the Czech Republic (the official European Roma Rights Center number of documented cases is 17 since 1990) the assailants have been convicted of murder by the Czech courts in only two cases, and only one of these was a conviction of racial murder. That particular decision took 5 years and was only granted on appeal.
Of course this kind of situation for the Roma (and other Gypsies such as the Sinti, the Olah and the Kalderash) is not unique to the Czech Republic. Years before ethnic Albanians in Kosovo began conflating the Roma with Serbian collaborators (post-NATO intervention) and ethnically cleansing them from the province, skinheads were murdering Roma throughout the former Yugoslavia. Over the years various human rights abuses against the Roma, ranging from police brutality to forced sterilization, have been reported from Austria to the US. There seems to be no place where the Roma do not suffer for their ethnicity. Within Europe, the post-communist countries are undeniably the worst in terms of their treatment of the Roma, and among post-communist countries, the Czech Republic is one of the worst places to be a Roma in the year 2000.
Who, then, are these people, and what has gone wrong here?
The Roma are of Indian origin. According to Crowe, "the gypsies entered the Czech lands... during the late Middle Ages," probably via Hungary as grooms to the army of King Andrew II returning from the Crusades of 1217-18. The "first undisputed reference" to Roma in the Czech lands dates from 1399. Roma who settled in Hungary during the 15th century served in the army and were commended for their service. Throughout the 16th century, Roma troops were often used against the Habsburgs by the Hungarian nobility, and it was this circumstance that led to strong anti-gypsy policies by the Habsburgs in the 16th century, especially after the Turkish defeat of the Hungarians in 1526. The Roma were suspected of collaborating with the Turks and became scapegoats for this defeat and almost every Central European catastrophe that followed.
There was an uneven approach to carrying out the Habsburg anti-gypsy policies in the 16th-century Czech lands, due to anti-Habsburg sentiment among the Czech nobility. In fact, the government actually intervened in 1556 to "forbid the drowning of Rom women and children," (which also shows that at times the populace was more bloodthirsty than their rulers). But Crowe also cites local records which show that "alms... were granted to Roms by town councils" in the Czech lands.
The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) turned the Roma into scapegoats again. Bohemia and Moravia were devastated, and the 1620 Battle of the White Mountain saw the Czech language suppressed until 1918. As part of the reassertion of imperial power in the Czech lands, an edict was issued ordering all adult male gypsies to be hanged without trial, while all adult women and young male gypsies were to be flogged and banished forever. In addition, "they were to have their right ear cut off in the kingdom of Bohemia, in the county of Mähren [Moravia] on the contrary the left ear." In order to communicate this edict to the mostly illiterate Roma, the Austrian authorities posted warning-placards (already in use in other German states) depicting these punishments.
After 1711 these Habsburg policies were somewhat softened, especially in Hungary. In 1757, Maria Theresa issued a new law depriving gypsies of the right to own property or travel. Her son, Emperor Joseph II, emphasized settlement and census-taking as well as the removal of Roma children from their parents to be raised in foster homes. His Serfdom Patent of 1781 "abolished the condition of personal bondage." But this relatively "enlightened" gypsy policy ended once the ramifications of the French Revolution of 1789 swept throughout Europe. No censuses were conducted and data on gypsies in the Czech lands is missing for most of the 19th century. A census from 1893 describes 36,231 Slovakian Rom and 7,734 "other" gypsies in the Slovakian part of the Hungarian kingdom; there is also a separate category of 3,904 gypsies described as involved in "petty crime...and bear handlers, who worked as wandering entertainers." Over 92% could not read or write, and Joseph II's settlement policies had not translated into any rise in socioeconomic status. Then came World War One.
As Hašek's novel The Good Soldier Švejk shows, the inhabitants of the Czech lands were not keen on participating in the military efforts of Austria-Hungary. Almost 5,000 Czechs were sentenced to death by military tribunals. The Slovaks also suffered because of their ties with Hungary, which carried a disproportionate burden in the war effort. Roma troops in the Austrian and Hungarian armies suffered heavy losses. But the Empire was over forever, and Czechoslovak independence was declared in 1918.
The Czechoslovak Constitution of 1920 gave Czechoslovak nationality "to all inhabitants...who were residents in the confines of the Republic on its inception...." All were guaranteed full economic and employment rights and "the free use of any language." The constitution also guaranteed instruction in a language other than "Czechoslovak" [sic] in areas where a non-Czech/non-Slovak-speaking minority consituted 20% of the population. The number of Roma affected by this new status was quite small, since their numbers were insignificant compared to other minorities: Germans in 1921 made up 23% of the population, Hungarians 6%, Ukrainians and Russians combined 4%, Jews less than 2%. Consequently, the Roma population achieved no political power in Czechoslovakia.
In 1924, 19 Moldavian Roma were tried for "cannibalism" in Czechoslovak Košice. The trial lasted five years. Although the charges were groundless, they served as a catalyst for a 1927 law which restricted "nomadic Olaššti Rom and nomads living in Gypsy style." The trial inflamed public opinion against the Roma, and in 1928 a pogrom took place during which Slovak peasants murdered 6 Roma, 2 of them children. Sentences for the murderers were mild. But there were also efforts throughout the 1920s, especially in Slovakia, to establish Roma schools with instruction in Slovak, some of which were built by the Roma themselves.
The Depression and Hitler's conquest of Czechoslovakia sent both the Roma and the Jews back to the 17th century. In 1941, a "protective custody" regulation was issued, directed at "...Gypsies and persons traveling as Gypsies..." as well as "asocials" and "work-shy persons." Those taken into such custody were sent to camps in Hodonín, Lety and elsewhere. In 1942, according to Crowe, a new decree transformed both Hodonín and Lety into "concentration camps for Gypsy families" (translators in the President's Office, take note!) In December 1943, Himmler issued a decree that persons of "mixed Gypsy blood" be sent to Auschwitz, and the majority of Czech Roma died in Auschwitz II. The Roma of Tiso's puppet state of Slovakia were much more fortunate, but the climate worsened when the Germans occupied Slovakia in 1944. Roma partisans were massacred for their role in the Slovak National Uprising, and atrocities took place at Slovak labor camps as well.
Czechoslovakia was liberated in 1945, a deeply traumatized place. An official campaign forced 1,859,541 Germans and 68,407 Hungarians to leave Czechoslovakia by the end of 1946. Over the next three years, 1.5. million people, some of them Slovak Gypsies, moved into the former Sudetenland. Many of these gypsies were sent to postwar labor camps in northern Bohemia and Moravia as a way of "exacting social conformity" from them. But some Slovak Roma returned to Slovakia after working on the war reconstruction and invested their earnings to improve conditions there.
One year after the 1948 communist putsch, an inter-ministry commission was created to examine the "so-called Gypsy Question." But the communists did little to help the Roma improve their quality of life. Attitudes of the day are exemplified by the 1952 Dictionary of the Czech Language, which defined "gypsy" as "a member of a wandering nation, a symbol of mendacity, theft,... jokers, liars, imposters, and cheaters." Nomadism was considered a problem. In 1958, at a time when the Roma population was estimated to be 150,000 strong, the Communist Party demanded an "unconditional solution": settlement. The Communists were concerned with avoiding charges of preferential treatment, but their assignment of precious housing resources to the impoverished Roma created a resentment which lingers to this day.
In 1965, a "long-range assimilation plan" was enacted. Substandard Roma housing, most of it in Slovakia, was destroyed and the inhabitants were forcibly put to work. Resettlement was government-subsidized, in theory enabling Roma families to purchase homes in the Czech lands. But the funds were inadequate and the program was not successful; the dramatic rise in Roma in the Czech lands was resented, and many Roma didn't want to remain there. And by 1968, on the brink of the Prague Spring and Soviet invasion, Czechoslovakia had one of the largest Roma populations in the Soviet bloc.
In the 1970s there was a renewed effort to force Roma integration and assimilation. The sterilization of women was used as a way to reduce the Roma birth rate, and the dissident group Charter 77 protested this in 1979. Then, as now, the Czechoslovak birth rate was declining, and by 1982 it was "below the level of biological reproduction." In the 1970s the average number of live births for a Czechoslovak woman was 2.4, compared to 6.4 for a Roma woman.
Assimilation through education was also attempted. Many Roma entered the school system speaking Romany as their primary language; as a result, they were (and to this day still are) frequently assigned to "Special Schools," a euphemism for schools for the mentally retarded. Once a student graduates from such a school, his or her path to higher education is barred. Thus it is not surprising that employment figures for the Roma have not improved.
In general, post-68 Czechoslovaks saw the Roma as "dirty," "lazy," "dishonest," and "primitive," a view still widely held here. An American Jewish Committee survey of the Czech Republic conducted in September 1999 found that 81% of the respondents would prefer not to have Roma as neighbors. After the Velvet Revolution, the democracy that gave the Roma the opportunity to develop politically also created a space for hate speech. The need for a scapegoat in the 21st century is the same as it was in the 16th; the Roma have now become the symbol of everything that went wrong with Czechoslovakia and have been made to pay a very high price throughout the 1990s.
Despite the establishment of Roma organizations and even a Roma Member of Parliament, there remains the unfortunate tendency for the Roma to deny their own ethnicity. For those who can, the temptation to pass for white is enormous. Even the 1999 British Channel Four documentary "The Roma Road" is subject to censorship in this country -- at the express request of the Roma who appear in it. So great is their fear of reprisals that they agreed to give their names and let their faces be shown solely on the condition that the documentary never be aired on Czech television.
This year the annual memorial event at the Lety concentration camp was attended by Roma from all over the Czech Republic as well as international supporters. There are a few brand-new signs in place that weren’t there before, including one marked "area of the former camp" which very pointedly refers to the fields next to the pig farm, not the area of the farm itself. There are also two (unpaved) parking lots now, but one still has to be "in the know" to find the place; a key sign is missing to mark the one-lane road onto which one must turn from the highway. The informational placard in place is more substantial and dignified than the plastic-covered affair erected in 1995, but the misinformation is still there, and the English-language translation of the text remains the worst in the country. But perhaps the problem can best be summarized by two facts: Deputy Prime Minister Rychetský arrived with memorial wreaths from the government early in the morning and left as quickly as possible; he did not stay for the memorial, which includes a Catholic mass for the dead and the loudly voiced complaints of those present. And the pig farm remains firmly in place over the bodies of those who suffered. Until the Czech government can demonstrate its commitment with 100% sincerity and remove the farm, their ribbons and small acts of incompetence are slaps in the face of those demanding justice today -- for everyone.
