“Are we the same Roma who rob you on the street?”
Petra Horvatova reaches over to squeeze the hand of her five-month-old son, the youngest of her three children, who's being held by Zhaneta Kandrachova, Petra's cousin. Both are Czech Roma, and are pictured at a Roma settlement just outside the town of Vsetin in the Czech Republic. Photo by Mary Rizos.
Prague 2007: Common Ground
Stefan Ziga is forty years old, is Roma, and the father of two sons and one baby girl. He is one of more than one hundred residents at a locality called Poschla in Vsetin, in the eastern part of the Czech Republic. Standing in front of two colorful metal buildings he now calls home, he plays with his daughter. What may look like a family idyll is more a story of living unwanted: most Roma families are not welcomed into Czech society. The people at Poschla know about problems with racism, unemployment, and the difficulties of trying to become part of a society that doesn’t want them.
“We are quite happy for these apartments, really. But how can my children integrate to the majority, when they have no contact with it and have no idea at all?” he asks.
The apartments that Ziga is talking about are at the edge of the city, behind the highway, and they also have with them two smaller buildings that are a place for children to play, and an office for a local charity. There used to be a dump here a few years ago. The people who live here at Poschla are all Roma, and this is their last chance to avoid homelessness.
Until October 2006 the people who now live at Poschla lived with 64 families in a five-story apartment building just a few meters from an emergency clinic in Vsetin’s city center. Most of the residents had defaulted on their rent payments, and an official city report said the building was untidy, noisy, and that there had been fires in some of the apartments. The townspeople were unhappy with the situation and wanted the city to do something.
“Imagine more than 50 children playing in front of the house—so noisy! And we know that this is something the emergency clinic wasn’t happy about either. But where else can the kids play?” asks Marian Tulej, 31, a Roma who lives and works as a social worker in Poschla. The old building next to the emergency clinic was demolished because it was in such bad condition. Some of the 64 families living there were white; some were Roma. All the families were moved, with most of the Roma families being sent to the newly built Poschla. None of the white families was relocated to Poschla. According to official records of the city of Vsetín, only five families were up-to-date on their rent payments. But all the people interviewed at Poschla for this story said they had no problems paying rent.
From the old building, twenty-two families—both Roma and non-Roma—were moved to apartments in the city. The apartments were offered to families the city government considered more capable of adapting, and ones that had a better record of paying rent and being employed. “The officers made criteria, for example the amount of debt, reliability paying rent or sending children to school,” said former mayor of Vsetín Jiri Cunek, who was responsible for the demolition of the building and relocation of the families, “We needed to evaluate those families who asked for flats in the city. We obviously do not have that many flats.”
Thirty-six of the families from the old building were offered apartments in the orange buildings at Poschla; six families were forced to sign a loan from the city to buy ruined houses in the Jeseniky Mountains. Some people describe the move as a deportation – especially in the case of those six families removed to the mountains. But there is truth on both sides: according to Vsetin’s spokesperson, almost all of the families moved to Poschla had defaulted on their rent payments, and the old building near the clinic was in such bad condition that its demolition was necessary.
But the Czech Ombudsman Otakar Motejl said in June 2007, after an investigation by his office, that the town had made several mistakes. First and most importantly, the town of Vsetin owned the old apartment building, and therefore the town was responsible for its condition. Building Poschla and moving the Roma families there was legal, Motejl concluded, but not a good solution. The walls at Poschla collect moisture and get moldy, and they don’t serve as any kind of sound barrier, either. One of the reasons why the old building was demolished, according to the town of Vsetin, was the unhealthy environment and the possibility that the building would collapse. The ombudsman said that if the reason for evicting families from this apartment building was the building’s poor condition and concern for residents’ health, then the problem was not solved. “The state of houses they were forced to move to is the same as that of Pavlač (the old building)” said Motejl.
Stefan Ziga spent his childhood among non-Roma families and says that he learned how to behave in the majority culture and be appreciated by it. But many of the families here at Poschla have never learned that. It may seem that Ziga has no problem. But he is, as are 70% of people who live here in Poschla, unemployed. And the possibilities for him to move away and start a better life are therefore very small. He looks sadly at the houses behind him and whispers: “This is forever, you know, not just for a while, but for a whole life.”
Living in these iron box houses means that there are honking car horns from the highway, drivers stopping to watch and then speeding away, and people pointing at Poschla residents and laughing. Stefan wants to leave this place and move to a normal apartment in the city. But that’s a matter of money that Stefan and many of the people around him do not have. “I plan to go to Sheffield, England, and earn some money there,” he says. “Then I will leave this place. I want a better life for my children.”
Stefan is not the only one who says that Roma should live among non-Roma people. A number of NGOs, social workers, and even politicians say the same. On the other hand, in places like Poschla, Roma families are close together, which is the way they live in their culture. “They do not live in families as we understand the word ‘family;’ they live in extended families. About 10 to 20 people in one,” explains Jitka Chalánková, deputy district commissioner for social affairs in Olomouc. She thinks that the differences between Roma and Czech society are so big that to solve this “problem” and ease tensions might take decades or maybe even centuries—if you’re a politician in the Czech Republic, working for Roma and supporting them means that you’ll never win elections, Chalankova says. “This work is very frustrating; you see one step forward and three steps backwards. But it is necessary to do something. This problem is already a crisis.”
And the cultural necessity of Roma to live in big families does not help much. Social workers must try to solve the problem not of one or two people, but of a whole family, no matter how big. “When they say they want to leave this place and live among white people, they partly tell the truth, but partly they are happy how they are now – together in one place,” explains David Žárský from the evangelical church charity that runs a youth club at Poschla for the Roma children.
The big question is whether to segregate or integrate: should the Roma, who some see as “problematic” and “unadaptable” people, be left without assistance, or should they be given a chance to be part of society—through education, negotiation and support? This question burns in almost every municipal government in the Czech Republic. Some, like Bohumín, have taken the road paved by Jiri Cunek in Vsetin, and some, like Rožnov pod Radhoštěm or Valašské Meziříči, have gone in the opposite direction. “Whoever solves this problem or eliminates these tensions should receive a Nobel prize,” said one social affairs deputy from Valašské Meziříčí who asked to remain anonymous.
But there is a town where some of the Roma and non-Roma families live together peacefully. At the edge of the city of Ostrava is the Czech-Roma Coexistence Village, where 75 Roma and 75 Czechs make up the small community.
This community was built for people who lost their houses in flooding in 1997. It takes about half an hour to get from the city center to the village, where four lines of green condo-like houses lie behind storage buildings. But the people here do not feel separated. “We like it here, after the flood we took care of each other, and it continues. We have learned how to behave and make no enemies,” says one of the Roma inhabitants, Věra Lazoriková, who’s in her 50s.
She shares her house with a non-Roma man, and both of them are unemployed, but Věra receives money for taking care of Sara, a 12-year-old girl with a physical disability. Vera’s own daughter, Katka, in her mid-20s, lives next door. There are no extended families here as there are in Vsetin. No more than eight people live in any of these houses. “For me, there is no real tradition in living in big families. It is just a question of habit,” says Věra. If there is a problem, everybody in the village sees it as part of normal neighborhood clashes.
“There is definitely no racism; there used to be at the beginning, but that man left this place, he simply was not willing to live here. His fault,” smiles Liběna Kopková, a non-Roma resident of the Coexistence Village, while looking after her two small kids playing on the calm and quiet street.
Věra Lazoriková thinks that her granddaughters are well prepared for living in the majority culture. “You ask me why? Just look at them, they are dressed up like you are, they speak perfect Czech and English and they want to study.” It is a question of upbringing—that is what Věra, NGOs and others agree on. “And the luck that we can live here,” continues Věra’s daughter Katka Hodosiová. Katka says her mother is living her “white” life. Vera says it’s what the majority wants her to do. Věra can even make jokes about race, Roma, and whites, and she can get the whole street laughing. But if she gets mad, it doesn’t matter whether the person is black or white. “Whoever is evil is evil. I hate bad people; violence makes no sense.”
Back in Vsetin, the Roma at Poschla remain unhappy that they have been segregated and moved out of town. Without the contact with the majority they say they are unable to realize and learn how they should behave, to learn what is “proper.” “If my kids see that the other kids are at home, studying or doing homework, they would go home, too. They need a good example to follow.” says Stefan Ziga. It is difficult for Roma to find someone to speak for them as a leader, a delegate or a representative. “We won’t listen to anybody from within,” says Emil, another inhabitant of Poschla.
“But when living among non-Romas, among ‘gádžos,’ I would be ashamed to be pointed out as somebody who is dirty, unclean or causes problems,” Emil continues. Nongovernmental organizations as well as sociologists and social workers agree with Emil and Stefan: Roma, if the majority wants to integrate them, should live integrated, not segregated and isolated, although that possibility is not without its problems, either.
“We are somehow forcing them to live like we do,” Jitka Chalánková says about the Roma. “It would definitely be much easier if they will do that. But they feel threatened by this pressure, they feel like they’re being cornered and they stop trusting the society they live in. And what you do when you feel you are being cornered? You attack. It is true, that they buy things they have no money for. That is because they are in such debt that they do not care. They don’t see a way out.”
The Roma are not a united group. Some are really trying to get out from where they are now and some like it the way it is and don’t want to make changes.
Věra Lazoriková, talking about the differences that are in every ethnic group, says: “Look at us, are we the same Roma who rob you on the street? And do you think I was never robbed by a Roma? Of course I was! And I told him what I think about him. I did.”
Making the circle complete, even Jiri Cunek says that people who aren’t part of the majority in society should live among those who are. “Living segregated is a way to solve the problem we have with the Roma community, but only, only if we are able to create working possibilities for them. But a really ideal solution is to spread these people out to places where they will live surrounded by . . . others.”
“We want to live among you,” says Stefan Ziga. “Living in ghetto does not help anybody.”
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