Common Ground

Look at us:

“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.

By Vendula Krizova and 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.

Where did they go?

Eviction of Roma families from the town of Vsetín

By Vendula Krizova and Mary Rizos
Prague 2007: Common Ground

The town of Vsetín has, over time, followed a policy aimed at what some called “socially unadaptable” families. Before 1998, these families all lived in several buildings in various parts of Vsetin. The buildings, owned by the town of Vsetin, deteriorated badly.  Between 1998 and 2006 most of the residents of these buildings were moved to just one of them, a five-story apartment building next to an emergency clinic in the city center. In the end there were 64 families living in this one building—more than 300 people. Most of the families had defaulted on rent payments (37 families had problems with paying the rent). Sixty-one percent of them had never worked, according to David Zarsky, who works for a charity that supports Roma in the area.

The building by the clinic in Vsetin was badly damaged; it caught fire several times, and an official report from the town of Vsetin says disease was spreading there. People from the city and the clinic were unhappy about that.

Rožnov pod Radhoštěm

Rožnov pod Radhoštěm is a town close to Vsetín. “The town decided back in 1980 to relocate Roma families among other citizens. And since then the mayors have continued more or less in this process,” says Karel Klepsa, deputy mayor.

Valašské Meziříčí

In Valašské Meziříčí, which is also near Vsetín, the Roma are living among non-Roma, according to officials responsible for social affairs. There are no ghettos because that has been a town policy for quite a long time and also because there is a much smaller number of Roma there. “But you have to understand that it is not easy to live next door to a Roma family. Not every Roma family, but in general it is hard. The way they did it in Vsetin? Well, it’s quite okay,” one official says.

Bohumín

In Bohumín, the situation is different. The town is near Ostrava and is in a region where unemployment is among the highest in the Czech Republic. A building called “A Hotel House” (which has since been rebuilt) was mainly inhabited by Roma families in 2005. Most of them were rent-defaulters and unemployed. Because the city of Bohumín, together with the owner of the building, did not extend a rent contract, these families were forced to “go to the street” or find help from their relatives. “This was something like a precedent to what happened in Vsetin and now the city may do it again,” says Kumar Vishwanathan, who runs an NGO helping disadvantaged people to deal with the system. Bohumín officials did not comment about this.

Village of coexistence

From the floodwaters rises a new “co-existence” community in Ostrava

By Vendula Krizova and Mary Rizos 
Prague 2007: Common Ground

In the Czech-Roma Coexistence Village in Ostrava, there are 30 houses and a community center for long-term social programs.  About 150 people live in the coexistence village. Half of them are Roma, half of them non-Roma. Of the thirty families, 10 are Roma, 10 are non-Roma and 10 are mixed (one partner Roma, one non-Roma).

After the floods in 1997 (which almost destroyed parts of Ostrava—Hrušov, Muglinov and Přívoz) there were many families living in conditions completely lacking in hygiene and dignity.  Several projects to build new apartment buildings or houses were begun, but they remained unfinished.  In 1999 the government of the Czech Republic gave 16.5 million Czech crowns to support an Opavian-Ostravian diocesan charity project to build the Coexistence Village. This was a precedent which has never been repeated, because money for building housing usually is given only to the municipal governments, not to charities or other organizations.

Justice Delayed

Since 2004, 87 Romany women in the Czech Republic have filed complaints alleging coerced sterilization. They are still waiting for an answer.

Elena Gorolova holds her friend Helena Balagova’s granddaughter. Gorolova was sterilized after the birth of her second child, in 1990. Photo by Zach Franz.

By Zach Franz and Marie Novakova
Prague 2007: Common Ground

It is difficult to overstate the importance of children in Romany culture. Large families are the norm even among the poorest Romany, and the arrival of a baby is feted by the whole community. "No children, no happiness" is a common Romany expression.

So when Helena Balogova, a Romany woman from Ostrava in the Czech Republic, learned shortly after giving birth to her fourth child that doctors had sterilized her shortly after the delivery, and that she would never again be able to have children, she was devastated. 

"I felt ashamed and humiliated, and I still do to this day," Balogova, now 46, said through a translator during a recent interview at her home in Ostrava.

Interview: Jitka Chalankova

Roma are ‘cornered like powerless animals’

By Mary Rizos and Vendula Krizova
Prague 2007: Common Ground

Jitka Chalankova is deputy district commissioner for social affairs in the Czech city of Olomouc.

There are other minorities in the Czech Republic — Vietnamese, Ukrainian, Slovak and Chinese. Why are problems of Roma so “visible”?

These problems are increasing in every locality in this republic. Roma have been here for a long time and there are a lot of them. Vietnamese and Ukrainian have been here only for a short time. The problems we have now might be a result of the time of communism. A lot of things were ignored and those which were solved were not solved in the best way. I’m referring primarily to the forced assimilation. Roma families were forced to listen to what to do and how they should live.

Why is it so hard for them to find a job?

They are very specific group. It is a long-term process and the jobs they are qualified for, or are used to doing in generations past, like helping in agriculture, are disappearing. Because of lack of motivation for education beyond the most basic, Roma people in general are unskilled laborers. Also with the transformation of our economy these many of these jobs for unskilled laborers vanished, and it is really impossible that all of them will find new jobs in computers or in offices or something. It’s just a fact that the Roma don’t get a good education. Many of them were forced to go to “alternative schools” even when it was not necessary. Their position in the labor market is therefore very hard.

Democracy is hardest on the underdog

The new Czech style of governing doesn’t come easily

By Sean Breslin
Prague 2007: Common Ground

Over the past three weeks, I’ve been hearing comments about a race of people that I’d never hear in the United States, things that echo typical complaints about blacks prior to the Civil Rights Movement. Czech opinions on the Roma—that they are lazy, that they are all pickpockets, that they mooch off society—are not said with malice or anger or fear, but simply as matters of fact.

That people have these feelings doesn’t surprise me; what surprised me was the openness of the Czechs in discussing those stereotypes, how candid they were in saying exactly how they felt about the Roma. Many students in our dorm simply laughed when we told them the basis of our project, and wondered why we even cared about the Roma at all. For all intents and purposes, we were called “nigger-lovers.”

Czech Roma citizens live in worst of both worlds

The Czechs say the Roma are lazy;
Romas see discrimination at every turn

By Martin Brodsky and Sean Breslin
Prague 2007: Common Ground

In a Czech city that traces its roots back to the thirteenth century, the Úřad Práce (Unemployment Office) building in Plzen seems uncharacteristically modern, with its automatic doors and steely grey exterior. A glass-enclosed bulletin board just outside the entrance is covered with job listings, and similar flyers cling to the walls of the hallways inside.

Jan Andrlík, a department head at the office, deals with about 700 Roma people looking for work. While the overall unemployment rate for the Czech Republic at the beginning of the millennium hovered around eight or nine percent, Roma experienced unemployment rates topping 45 percent for the same time period. Although high, it’s one of the lowest Roma unemployment rates in the region. Hungary’s 56 percent and Slovakia’s is 84 percent.