Living on the edge: a Roma clan in Ostrava, Czech Republic, Julian Kramer

Thu, 31 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000

The old Gypsy woman points with her finger at a group of people gathered in front of a shabby housing block. “This is my daughter. The Germans wouldn’t let her cross the border at Rozvadov.” I had read about the incident in Lidové noviny, supposedly the newspaper of choice for Czech intellectuals. A whole Gypsy neighbourhood had been on its way to Britain, but was not let through at the Czech-German border.

The old Gypsy woman with an eternal smile introduces me to an energetic, raven-haired young woman in a lilac dress and a cigarette in her right hand. “What do you want to know?” she asks and blows out some white smoke. Later another member of the clan will tell me that journalists just come here to create a big media bubble and then rush back to Prague.

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We are in a southern suburb of Ostrava, a heavy-industrial Czech town close to the Polish border. Unemployment is at 20%. The complete collapse of industry after the fall of communism has taken its toll.

When I tell the gathered clan that I am a journalist from London, their icy expressions give way to unabashed curiosity. Where will your article be published, what publication are you writing for, who sent you here?

How the poor live

They are keen to tell their stories – stories of discrimination, petty crime, toiling in the mines of Ostrava and family members locked away in prison. Gejza Kunda, 37, comes across as the leader of the clan. He is the one who talks most of the time. When I ask him why 1,800 Roma left the Czech Republic for Britain in 2001, he takes a deep breath and says: “There is a lot of discrimination here. They don’t let us into pubs. The other day some of us wanted to go to a discotheque and they wouldn’t let us in.”

I suggest that the Czech prime minister Vladimir pidla appealed to the Roma to stay in the Czech Republic despite discrimination. “If problems were solved here, Roma wouldn’t emigrate”, responds Kunda. The previous government of Václav Klaus did not do anything to solve our problems. We are afraid of leaving the house at night. If something happens here, people always say ‘the gypsies did that’.”

During numerous discussions with Czechs and Slovaks, including my host family in Prague, one argument was reiterated over and over again: that the Roma were just living off state benefits for their brats, parasites to the rest of society. The Economist wrote in a special report on 10 May 2002 that Roma are “at the bottom of every socio-economic indicator: the poorest, the most unemployed, the least educated, the shortest-lived, the most welfare-dependent, the most imprisoned, and yes, the most segregated”.

I could verify these observations with my own eyes. The people I talked to in Ostrava are dirt-poor. They live in crumbling, dusty social housing blocks with smashed windows gaping in the stairwells. Gejza Kunda allegedly owed 1,000 Czech crowns (£10) to Monika, the bar woman in the local pub, at the time of my visit. He told me he had worked ten years in Silesian coalmines, but did not get any pension. “I went to court, but nothing happened.” Kunda’s mother told me she could barely live off the state benefits she received.

During the interview there was a constant hubbub of curious children around us, including Kunda’s grandchild, whom his very young son-in-law proudly presented in a battered pram.

The Czech government recently said that the social benefit system should no longer be a positive motivation for Roma to emigrate. Until recently Roma asylum-seekers would return from Britain and automatically have a certain sum of state benefits in their account. I ask Gejza Kunda to comment on this policy change.

“I personally think that people who emigrate don’t have a right to social benefits when they come back. But I want to tell you something: I have a son who is sixteen. He will soon have to do military service. He will have to swear an oath to serve his fatherland. But his fatherland doesn’t acknowledge him as a worthy citizen. What kind of fatherland is that?”

As Kunda starts to talk about his unnamed son, he becomes more and more emotional. “My son was called ‘dirty Gypsy’ at school. He was also told that Gypsies stink. Now he is somehow allergic to Whites. [Roma in the Czech Republic are sometimes pejoratively referred to as ‘Blacks’].

“My son is in prison now because he stole a lot. But he is only a child, and punishment must be reasonable. My sister is also in prison. I don’t feel safe here, I don’t feel like an ordinary citizen.”

The taste of economic and social deprivation is palpable. One cannot help wondering how children could ever intellectually prosper in such a bleak environment. Yet the ones I talked to all seemed as curious and alert as one would expect from children of their age. Some of them asked me to teach them random English words. There was not the slightest hint of mental retardation.

This is not how official policy in the Czech Republic sees it. According to a 1991 report prepared by members of a working group for the then Czechoslovak Federal Ministry of Work and Social Affairs in Prague, 46.4% of the country’s Romany children were in so called “remedial special schools”, meaning schools for children with learning difficulties, compared with only 3.2% of non-Romany children. A Romany child was therefore approximately fifteen times more likely to have been judged to have “intellectual deficiencies”.

Apartheid in the heart of Europe

The European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) in Budapest states in its 1999 report A Special Remedy that no one interviewed during ERRC research for the report in the Czech Republic considered that the proportion of Roma in “remedial special schools” had decreased since 1990.

According to the same report the Czech Institute for Information on Education yearbook of 1997 shows that 62.5% of Romany children recorded attended special schools. That is fifteen times the national average.

I obtained a written statement, evidence for a lawsuit at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, from Gizela Kopalová, 45, a Roma woman from Ostrava and a neighbour of Gejza Kunda. The chilling document describes how her daughter had gradually been forced to leave basic primary school and attend a school for children with learning difficulties instead.

According to the document Gizela Kopalová’s daughter, Veronika, first attended the Chrjukinova basic school in Ostrava-Zábřeh on 1 September 1997 together with three Roma children. They were all forced to sit in the back row and, Kopalová states, the teacher simply ignored them.

At the end of the school year the teacher decided that Veronika repeat the year. The situation did not improve, and when Veronika tried to participate in lessons, the teacher, Ms Glogorová, allegedly told her: “We don’t want to hear anything from you.”

Kopalová recalls how she went to the school at the end of the second year of Veronika’s school career to return some books, and Ms Glogorová told her to keep them, if only Veronika would not return to school.

Veronika also told her mother about being bullied by classmates, who said she had lice and that she was a dirty Gypsy. When Gizela Kopalová told the teacher that her daughter was afraid of going to school, Ms Glogorová told her that Veronika did not fit into a basic school class and that Kopalová should send her to a school for children with learning difficulties, where Veronika would find it easier to fit in.

Veronika received psychological counselling in a psychiatric hospital in Ostrava from 9 - 23 September 1999. Her mother thinks that her experiences at school will overshadow the rest of her life.

The Chrjukinova basic school let Veronika know through her school diary – in which teachers in the Czech Republic evaluate the daily progress of schoolchildren – that she must have a psychological evaluation carried out.

The psychologist (who remains unnamed in Kopalová’s document) recommended that Veronika attend a school for children with learning difficulties. In 2002, Veronika completed the fifth grade at the Kapitana Vajdy school for children with learning difficulties in Ostrava-Zábřeh.

Roma form 2% of the Czech Republic’s population, if the official 1997 Council for Nationalities report is to be believed. There are eight “remedial special schools” in Ostrava. According to ERRC research the lowest percentage of Romany pupils in these schools was 16% (at the Kapitana Vajdy “remedial special school”), and the highest 94% (at the Ibsenova “remedial special school”). One can only wonder when the Czech Republic will finally acknowledge the facts.

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Living on the edge: a Roma clan in Ostrava, Czech Republic, Julian Kramer