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News server Romea.cz. Everything about Roma in one place

Czech Republic: Deadline passes for Romani tenants to vacate condemned buildings

22 October 2012
6 minute read

On Friday morning the Czech building works authority delivered an ultimatum to the residents of Přednádraží street in Ostrava: They had until midnight Saturday – last night – to vacate their homes because poor hygienic conditions have rendered the buildings unfit for human habitation. Some of the Romani residents, approximately 140 people total, have decided to stand their ground. Together with their landlord, they are questioning the eviction order. Kumar Vishwanathan, an activist with the Life Together civic association (Vzájemné soužití) who is helping the ghetto residents, told the Czech Press Agency the people are doing their best to perform partial repairs to the buildings and want the authorities to change their decision.

“We are performing repairs. Together with the owner we want to convince the authorities not to demolish these buildings,” Vishwanathan told the Mediafax agency today.

“A Romani entrepreneur has donated 15 bags of mortar. The residents will be walling up access to the balconies, which the building works authority says are dangerous, and they will be using a disinfecting whitewash on the walls and walling up most of the cellar windows to create ventilation slits,” Vishwanathan told Mediafax. He said nothing more can be done with the cellars because broken sewer lines have transformed them all into sumps.

Landlord Oldřich Roztočil visited the buildings at midnight to see whether they had been vacated. He called on the Romani residents to leave now that the deadline had passed, but he knew it was just a formality. “Dear tenants, I am calling on all of you to leave your homes and these premises. You are no longer permitted to remain here,” Roztočil told the Romani residents, who gathered together outside around a campfire from 11 PM until midnight. The residents are doing their best to deflect their fear and nervousness over what will happen next. Other Romani residents living in other localities of Ostrava joined them for moral support.

“At the very least I expected some bureaucrats to show up here, since they claimed on Friday that it’s too dangerous to live here and that the buildings must be closed from one day to the next. No one showed up,” said Roztočil.

Jana Pondělíčková, spokesperson for the Municipal Department of Moravská Ostrava and Přívoz, said officials will monitor whether the buildings have been vacated on Monday. “If the buildings are not vacated, officials will take the next steps, including an administrative proceedings. However, at this moment I cannot say how they will proceed,” Pondělíčková said.

Vishwanathan said the ghetto residents are planning to communicate to the building works authority on Monday that they have repaired the flaws discovered by the inspection. They will ask the authority to revise its decision and issue a new one. “However, they don’t have anywhere else to go, and that is why they said they are not leaving. They have reached an agreement with the landlord that they will repair as many of the problems as possible and that he will then go to the building works authority and the state building inspectors tomorrow, where he will file a report on what has been repaired and what else needs to be done. He will call on the authorities to revise their decision,” Vishwanathan told Mediafax. In his view, not all of the buildings should have been condemned. He believes the evictions are merely a pretext for the land to be cleared so it can be used as an industrial zone.

“We will not leave! You’d have to shoot us! We have lived here for decades and we will not let them take our homes,” news server iDNES.cz reports the Romani residents as saying. “I’m not going anywhere. We’ll just start living here in tents if they tear the buildings down. They would have to use force to evict us,” resident Jan Bandy declared resolutely.

Yesterday the residents used wooden boards to cover up the lower-level windows on the buildings. Local children painted pictures on the wood. Today the residents have paid for the delivery of a tank of potable water and are ordering a container into which to load the waste from the clean-up of the cellars. Broken sewer lines have turned them into a combination of a cesspool and garbage dump. Mediafax reports that the residents are gathering bricks in order to perform more structural repairs. When they are finished, they will post small lists on each building as to who repaired which flaws and what still has to be done.

Approximately 40 families totaling between 200 and 300 people once lived in the 10 buildings. Only 20 families, or 100 people, are still there. News server Romea.cz reports that 22 families living on Přednádraží street are financially solvent, with no outstanding debts. If evicted, they would have little recourse but to move into local “loan-shark” residential hotels, which charge as much as CZK 2 500 per person per month. “The rooms are small, the showers and toilets are communal, it’s a total catastrophe. Moreover, the worst members of the Romani community live there – alcoholics, violent people, we will never go there,” resident Robert Kuman told news server iDNES.cz.

Roztočil said he believes the authorities’ behavior is serving an ulterior motive. In his view, that hypothesis is confirmed by the fact that officials told people on Friday that they might die if they stayed in the buildings, but then merely monitored the situation in the media from the comfort of their own homes yesterday and took no emergency action to remove the residents. “In the morning I learned that these people have no money at all, so we bought them some food. Other local Romani people are coming here to express their moral support, they are concerned that the authorities might want to get rid of them next. Tomorrow, on Monday, I will file an appeal and I want to find out from the building works authority whether we can’t find a temporary solution,” the entrepreneur said.

Vishwanathan wants to appeal to the Ostrava Water and Sewer Works (Ostravské vodárny a kanalizace) to renew water supply to the buildings. “This is a violation of their human rights to turn off their water. An NGO is getting them water as well, we can do that until Monday, but we can’t supply it after that,” the activist said, adding that both the electricity and gas are allegedly scheduled to be cut off to the buildings on Monday as well.

The water company halted supplies on the Friday before last because of non-payment of invoices. Roztočil said the tenants owe him back utilities payments. He said the situation with payment had significantly deteriorated during the past few months, as did the state of the buildings after officials told people they were slated for demolition.

The building works authority decided to close the buildings on Friday and gave the residents one day to move out. Some of the 200 ghetto residents had already moved into the local residential hotel. Roztočil said that only two of the remaining families still have valid leases. The other tenants’ leases had expired, and outsiders have also been squatting in the buildings. Some residents have lived there for more than 30 years.

The main flaws which led to the authorities deciding to condemn the buildings include gross structural damage, including to the ceilings and the internal electricity distribution systems, which are too dangerous to operate. Sewer lines in the buildings have not functioned for some time. The people have had no running water in their apartments for more than a week and have ordered the delivery of a water tank. Roztočil alleges it is unclear to whom the broken sewer lines belong, which is why he has been unable to repair the buildings.

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