Open Letter to the British Helsinki Human Rights Group
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Subject: Open Letter to the British Helsinki Human Rights Group
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Original sender: European Roma Rights Center <[email protected]>
Open Letter to the British Helsinki Human Rights Group
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The ERRC is herewith distributing unchanged an open letter
issued by Member of Parliament and ERRC board member Monika Horakova
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Open Letter to the British Helsinki Human Rights Group
It is with great shock and sorrow that I read the recently released
report on the Roma situation in the Czech Republic, published by the
British Helsinki Human Rights Group (BHHRG) on March 28, 1999
(Hereinafter, the Report) - http://www.bhhrg.org. Not only the
content, but the tone of the report leads me to wonder whether the
authors had an ulterior motive, such as stemming the flow of Roma into
Britain, by painting an unrealistic, rosy picture of conditions for
Roma in the Czech Republic. I had thought that the Helsinki Group was
a non-partisan body interested in exposing and helping to solve human
rights abuses in the world. This report caused me to question my
previously held beliefs. However, I have since learned that the BHHRG
has no connection to the International Helsinki Federation for Human
Rights in Vienna. It is a disgrace that the BHHRG is using the good
Helsinki name to mislead the public into thinking that their racis
propaganda is somehow affiliated with the well-respected Helsinki
Group. As a Member of Parliament and a Roma myself, I have fought
against these racist and stereotypical attitudes my whole life. When
I think of the injustices I have personally faced: being denied access
to public restaurants, being afraid to take public transportation,
among others, and the far worse injustices suffered by many of my
fellow Roma, I can scarcely believe that a report such as this could
dare to blame the media for blowing the situation out of proportion.
I shall outline my objections to this report as well as offer evidence
refuting many of the Reports claims.
The report betrays its motives early on by stating that media reports
have spurred the exodus of many Czech Roma to, countries like Britain
or as far away as Canada. According to this report, by October 1997
the Canadians had imposed visa requirements on all Czechs to stem the
flow of unwanted Gypsy asylum seekers. This statement is misleading.
The fact is that in 1998, seven hundred and thirty-eight Czech Roma
were granted political asylum in Canada because of the persecution
they faced, as a group, in the Czech Republic. Only seventy-eight
were denied political refugee status. In support of its decision the
Canadian government sited the facts that twenty-eight Roma had been
killed in race-related attacks since 1990, and that there are believe
to be over four-thousand Skinheads presently active in the Czech
Republic. The report goes on to say that governments in Britain and
other Western countries have failed to support claims by the Czechs
that there is no systematic persecution of Gypsies in the Czech
Republic. This statement alone speaks volumes. The British Helsinki
Human Rights Group appears to be alone in supporting the claim that
there is no systematic persecution of Roma in the Czech Republic. The
Report then denounces Czech President Vaclav Havel for echo(ing) the
views of those who charge that the Czechs are inherently racist. To
my knowledge, Mr. Havel has never made any such sweeping
generalization of the Czech people. As for his statements that imply
the Roma population is persecuted by representatives of the state like
the police, I invite BHHRG to look over the many documents in my
possession supporting such allegations.
While it is true, as the Report states, that many people in
transitional economies like the Czech Republic are suffering problems
of unemployment, it is a mischaracterization to imply that this shows
no discrimination against Roma in employment. I am outraged by the
broad generalization made that, it is issues like punctuality and
reliability on the job as well as a tendency to move suddenly from
place to place since 1989 rather than a crude perception of Gypsies as
petty criminals among Czech employers which has tended to reduce their
chances of employment in the post-Communist private sector. It is
just such racist stereotypes as these that keep employers from hiring
Roma! I am appalled that such language appears in a report by a
so-called human rights group.
The Reports treatment of the education of Roma in the Czech Republic
is equally biased and misleading. The first sentence under the
heading of education in this report says, "It is widely believed that
all Gypsy children are educated in schools for the mentally
handicapped, the so-called special schools. This is untrue". The
language used obviously appears to try and compensate for a grossly
misleading statement by remaining technically true. Of course, all
Roma children are not in special schools. However, eighty percent of
Roma children go to these special schools. Roma students make up over
fifty-percent of students in special schools while Roma comprise only
two to three percent of the population of the Czech Republic as a
whole. I am currently working on a project of education reform that
will prevent Roma children from being systematically relegated to
these inferior schools through culturally biased IQ tests. Your
statement does a great disservice to these goals. Yes, there are some
Roma children with difficulties in the Czech language, as well as some
Roma children with other social or psychological handicaps. This does
not explain the extraordinarily high percentages of Roma children in
these special schools, unless of course the writers of this report
believe there is something inherently inferior in the Roma ethnicity.
>From the tone of this report, I fear that may be the case.
Further, the Report offers this solution to the problem of Roma
children being relegated to special schools: the stigma of special
schools could be reduced were they not presented as places for the
mentally handicapped rather than (sic) for those with learning
difficulties. Is this a serious suggestion? Change the name of the
schools and all will be solved? This statement reinforces my
impression that the authors of the Report agree that over eighty
percent of Roma children deserve to be in these schools in the first
place. The blatant racist stereotypes continue. BHHRG cites a school
that should be a model for others of its kind in the Czech Republic.
As I do not have any specific knowledge of this particular school, I
cannot comment directly on it. However, in praising this school, the
Report gives examples of the problems faced by the staff, in addition
to lack of funding. These include: Gypsy parents are often
ambivalent about education: a child can suddenly be removed from the
school without warning. It can be dispiriting, too, when a bright
girl pupil moves to the gymnasium only to be removed by her parents
whose custom is to have her working and usually pregnant by her early
teens. These statement reify the stereotypes held by many about the
Roma population and I am grief-stricken that they appear as factual
statements in a report by a human rights organization. Imagine
substituting the word Blacks for Gypsies. Perhaps that will help
illustrate the outrageousness of these statements.
Under the section on Government, the Report correctly states that many
police departments do not keep statistics on the racial origin of
criminals (or victims for that matter). It then says that, the
absence of such statistics exacerbates the tendency to exaggerate,
meaning exaggeration on the part of Roma rights activists. It then
says, even if crimes committed by the Gypsies had gone down (imagine
that!) no one would know. (emphasis in original) The Report fails to
acknowledge another effect of the lack of racial statistics on crime.
It allows hate crimes against Roma to go undetected. Although I favor
keeping track of racial statistics, to say that we must either scrap
the ban on collecting ethnic data, or accept that allegations that
many crimes are racially motivated, are purely hypothetical is
offensive. While no official statistics on race are kept, I can
assure you that based on the complaints I receive, racially motivated
crimes are not hypothetical. I agree with the Report that, to label a
whole nation like the Czechs as vicious racists without proper
evidence in unscientific and risks provoking a serious backlash. But
who has labeled the whole nation as vicious racists? Certainly not
anyone to my knowledge. But to use this statement to imply that there
are no racists in the Czech Republic is wrong. The Czech Republic
would truly be unique in the world if this were the case.
The comparison of the Czech Republic with Slovakia serves little
purpose. Yes, things are bad for the Roma in Slovakia, as in many
places in the world. However, this Report seems to imply that the
Roma in the Czech Republic should be grateful that they are not being
herded into ghettos like Lunik 9 in Slovakia. Any amount of racism is
intolerable. A comparison such as this adds nothing to the discussion
on Roma rights in the Czech Republic.
In conclusion, the Report seems to sympathize with ordinary Czechs
(who) are now in danger of being seriously radicalized. The danger to
the physical, social, and economic well being of the Roma population
in the Czech Republic, far outweighs any danger to the ordinary Czech
being labeled a racist. (As far as I know, this Report is the only
source to label them as such.) The Report further states that
President Havel's recent decline in popularity is due to his regular
attacks on the Czech people as racists. On what does the Report base
such a shocking allegation? And if that is the case, what does it say
about the Czech Republic if the President has lost popularity for his
support of basic human rights for a minority group in his country?
The Report quotes Marta Miklusakova, of the Czech human rights
department, as advocating stronger laws forbidding racist language in
public, a proposal starkly reminiscent of the Communist-era mindset,
the Report calls it. No one is advocating a restriction on free
speech. However, hate speech has been regulated in many democracies,
including the United States. A U.S. Federal statute (42 U.S.C.A.
�3631 Subchapter II Prevention of Intimidation) states: Whoever,
whether or not acting under color of law, by force or threat of force
willfully injures, intimidates or interferes with, or attempts to
injure, intimidate or interfere with
(a) any person because of his race, color, religion, sex, handicap
shall be fined under Title 18 or imprisoned not more than one year, or
both I am sure that the United States would be interested to know that
its statute against intimidating speech based on race or ethnicity is,
reminiscent of the Communist-era mindset.
The Report lists its final conclusions as follows: It is untrue that
the majority of Gypsy children are afraid to walk to school. It is
untrue that Gypsies do not receive social security. It is untrue that
every fight or scuffle that breaks out involving a Gypsy is a racist
attack or the fault of the other party. It is untrue that Gypsies are
thrown out of their flats if the rent isnt paid. These conclusions
are absurd. First of all, who has made these claims in the first
place? I assure you that I have never said that all fights involving a
Rom are racially motivated. Secondly, the Report offers little or no
proof to back up its conclusions. They seem to have visited two towns
in the Czech Republic and based their conclusions on that limited
research.
Finally, this statement: Compared with race relations in the USA,
France or Britain, for instance, the Czech Republic seems in many ways
a model of inter-ethnic harmony (emphasis added). This statement
would be enough to make me laugh out loud, if it were not so
tragically sad that people throughout the word will read this report
and actually believe it.
Member of Czech Parliament Mgr. Monika Horakova
[email protected]
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The ERRC is an international public interest law organisation which
monitors the situation of Roma in Europe and provides legal defence in
cases of human rights abuse. For more information, visit ERRC on the
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