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.