Why are relations tense in the Czech Republic between the Romani and Ukrainian minorities?

This is not a new phenomenon, in the Czech Republic relations between Roma and Ukrainians have been frozen for a long time, and it was only a matter of time before such an incident took place. Everybody who is responsible for public safety here paid no attention to that likelihood.

Relations between non-Romani Ukrainians and Roma have never been ideal in Ukraine, either. Romani Ukrainians have faced discrimination and segregation in all areas of life in Ukraine, exactly as they do in all other European countries.

Since Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine, those of us who have been aiding refugees from Ukraine have had to address the situation of non-Romani Ukrainian refugees refusing, for example, to get on the same bus as Romani Ukrainian refugees to reach safety – they preferred to walk with their children several kilometers in freezing weather and snow, that was reportedly better and easier for them than taking a bus together with Romani passengers was. Likewise, we faced situations when non-Romani Ukrainian refugees refused to sleep in the same place or in the same room as Romani Ukrainian refugees, believing the Roma would rob them, rape them or maybe even murder them in their sleep.

I can easily imagine that most Czechs would probably behave similarly if they had to flee from a war and go abroad together with Romani people. Why, though, does a large part of Czech Romani people have a bad relationship with the refugees from Ukraine and with Ukrainians in general?

I think the reasons for this are apparent and easily understandable. They have already been mentioned by the authors of several previous commentaries on the recent events in Brno.

In the Czech Republic, Romani children are discriminated against in education and frequently segregated into substandard schools. This happens irrespective of a binding judgment from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ordering the Czech Republic to adopt the kind of measures which would bring the discrimination and segregation of Romani people to an end in the education system, and 16 long years after that judgment was issued, our republic has not yet managed to adopt measures which would bring this discrimination and segregation of Romani children in education to an end and facilitate their education in mainstream, regular schools.

Allegedly this just “doesn’t work” here with Romani people. Of course, all Romani people here have seen that last year, mainstream education managed to include the children of refugees from Ukraine – if there was the political will, this worked immediately, places in regular schools were found right away for those children, unlike Romani children, and despite the fact that the children from Ukraine didn’t know the language, they did not have to face either discrimination or segregation.

In the Czech Republic, Romani people are discriminated against on the housing market quite strongly. Despite the fact that the Act on Antidiscrimination is a valid part of our legislation, its violation in relation to Romani people is not enforced or prosecuted by anybody in any way.

The authorities and the police ignore violations of the Act on Antidiscrimination, they tolerate them, they don’t address them at all. The result is that a significant part of Romani people in the Czech Republic has no opportunity to rent regular housing for the usual price and has no choice but to live in the high-risk, pathological environment of the ghettos into which Romani people are segregated.

Romani renters pay significantly higher prices for apartments of the very worst category than they would for nice housing in the center of town. Last year, though, Czech Romani men and women saw that the refugees from Ukraine did not have to go live in moldy, overpriced units in the ghetto or in the residential hotels that charge usurious rates, but that suddenly decent apartments could be found where they were housed – and Romani people desire exactly such regular apartments for normal prices, they would like to live in such units too, but because discrimination against them is not being addressed, they are unable to do so.

An incident also recently transpired here of Czech children bullying a fellow pupil from Ukraine. They grossly insulted her and then spat on her.

The President of the Czech Republic subsequently met with this little girl and expressed his solidarity and support to her. That is certainly good, the president demonstrated humanity and solidarity, he behaved brilliantly in response to what happened.

However, the same experience the little girl from Ukraine went through has probably been shared by absolutely every Romani pupil who does manage to attend a non-segregated school, where Romani schoolchildren are in the minority. Every single one of them has had no choice but to experience something similar or worse, frequently more than once.

Romani people are naturally asking why the president is not also meeting with the bullied Romani pupils and their families – after all, there is an enormous amount of them, similar cases of Romani children being bullied over their nationality happen every single day. During the time that President Pavel has been in office, hundreds of cases of Romani children enduring racist bullying at school have most likely already happened, but nobody takes an interest in them and nobody does anything to address it.

All last year, Romani men and women also naturally observed that the authorities and the Czech state were not giving equal treatment to all the refugees from Ukraine, either. Everybody saw how the authorities, out of the thousands of refugees arriving here, carefully selected the ethnic Romani ones and subsequently treated them absolutely differently than the light-skinned refugees from Ukraine.

Romani people recall the situation from last spring and summer, when disinformation was disseminated en masse about Romani Ukrainian refugees in the Czech Republic, claiming that they allegedly were not even refugees at all, but economic migrants who were “Hungarian”, allegedly coming here for welfare, undeserving of aid, and they remember how even some high-ranking politicians spread that antigypsyist disinformation and hoax. So while light-skinned refugees from Ukraine were aided by our state and treated with dignity, Romani Ukrainian children and their mothers slept under bushes in parks or were “accommodated” behind barbed wire in the cells of detention facilities, or in outdoor camps of tents.

Most Romani Ukrainians quickly understood Czech society’s default setting when it comes to Romani people and hotfooted it to countries in Western Europe with less antigypsyism or even returned to Ukraine. If Romani Ukrainian refugees found any aid and support in the Czech Republic, it was usually from volunteer groups or Romani-led organizations.

Czech Romani men and women anxiously followed all of this and naturally asked themselves how it could be that the Czech authorities and institutions were treating the refugees so very differently, just on the basis of the color of their skin. Another important factor that is significantly worsening relations between the Romani and Ukrainian minority in the Czech Republic is the disinformation and hoaxes which are spreading online above all.

Some disinformation and hoaxes are undoubtedly intentionally produced by Russia to raise tensions and create conflict in society. While Romani people are not the sole section of society being targeted by such disinformation, it is exactly in Romani communities that it falls on quite fertile ground, and a significant proportion of Romani men and women in the Czech Republic are under its influence.

Why is that? Research shows there is a significant correlation between one’s faith in the institutions of the state system and one’s tendency to believe disinformation.

In the Czech Republic, many Romani people have no faith in institutions or in the system because it is strongly affected by an antigypsyism that is structural, treating Romani people both antagonistically and discriminatorily. At the same time, Romani people are confronted on a daily basis with the fact that the mainstream media frequently report about them untruthfully, distorting reality, or promoting alleged successes in the integration of Romani people, painting the Romani situation in rosy colors even though Roma themselves know it is failing, it doesn’t work, and that such reports are duplicitous and fabricated.

Romani people here know the mainstream, so-called serious media, just like the authorities and institutions, are ignoring the problems that afflict the Romani community. That, along with the total absence of any Romani perspective in the mainstream media, are some of the reasons why Romani people approach information that is official and the mainstream media with distrust, and they seek answers to their questions elsewhere, perhaps on conspiracy-theory websites and disinformation groups on social media.

Another important factor is that, thanks to being discriminated against and segregated in the education system, many Romani people have acquired an education that was substandard, a consequence of which is that in impoverished Romani communities there is a low level of general overview, just as there is a low level of informational and media literacy, as well as a frequent lack of any capacity for critical thinking, which means the recipients of information are not able to contextualize it and comprehend its wider implications. When combined with distrust of the official media, narratives, and system, this is an ideal spawning ground for various manipulations and the spread of disinformation and hoaxes.

Is there a way out of this conundrum? What should be done?

The only chance is for the discrimination and segregation of Romani people in education, housing and other areas to come to an end. The applicable Act on Antidiscrimination has to begin to be enforced and upheld, breaches of it have to finally start being prosecuted as far as Roma are concerned.

If we want the Roma to be in the same boat as us, we first have to let them get aboard.