Czech Republic: Roma ghettos have CCTV systems but no playgrounds

Dear survivors, my dear Roma, activist friends, ladies and gentlemen,

We are gathering here at a really difficult time. The situation of Romani
people, especially those who are impoverished, has deteriorated in the Czech
Republic over the past 20 years. The worst thing is that it is deteriorating
more and more rapidly. Antigypsyism, the diseased hatred of Romani people, is on
the rise. How far will this situation go? The policy for the social integration
of Romani people as we have known it for the past 20 years in the Czech Republic
has failed. It has not even managed to slow down the deterioration of their
situations, to say nothing of improving them.

We have met here to commemorate the memory of the Romani victims of Nazism
who perished in the Lety concentration camp. We cannot gather at the actual site
of the camp because it is occupied by an industrial-scale farm where pigs are
wallowing in their own excrement. What does that tell us about the position of
Czech society with respect to Romani people? Can we imagine a pig farm at
Lidice, or at Terezín? Does that seem absurd to you?

We must realize that the Romani people murdered here were not even the
victims of the German Nazis as much as they were victims of Czech antigypsyists.
The German Nazis murdered the Romani people who survived Lety and were
transported to Auschwitz. The guards in the concentration camp here were not
German SS officers, but Czech Police. No one has ever been punished for the
crimes perpetrated here.

Antigypsyism, in its worst form, is not professed by neo-Nazis alone here,
but has become a majority, predominant opinion in this society. It is rooted so
deeply that most antigypsyists neither realize nor admit that they are
antigypsyists.

The worst anti-Romani demonstration to take place here recently happened on
26 August 2011 in Rumburk and launched a series of other anti-Romani
demonstrations in the Šluknov foothills, culminating in attacks on Romani homes
by an angry mob that was organized not by neo-Nazis from the DSSS party, but by
local politicians from the Czech Social Democrats. The mayor, an MP, and a
senator spoke at that demonstration. The aggressive mobs participating in these
anti-Romani demonstrations and marches are no longer comprised of neo-Nazis, but
of ordinary citizens.

Mainstream politicians borrow heavily from neo-Nazi speakers and can rely on
their parliamentary immunity from prosecution when making their own anti-Romani
speeches of hatred and radicalism. In the final analysis, we have seen more than
once that anti-Romani rhetoric from a politician means his or her guaranteed
electoral success, as the vast majority of voters here are antigypsyists too.

In Czech movie theaters, the antigypsyist film series “Bastards” (Bastardi)
is enjoying record numbers of viewers. Compared to those films, neo-Nazi
propaganda online is sheer amateurism. The most famous Czech actors and even
some top politicians are playing roles in these films.

Many so-called experts are also antigypsyists, some of whom are, for example,
preventing the abolition of the segregation of Romani children in our country
into the so-called “special”, “specialized”, “community” or “practical” gypsy
schools. Romani children allegedly have different educational needs and cannot
be educated together with white children according to a shared curriculum.
However, the same Romani children who were segregated into the “special schools”
in the Czech Republic are successfully studying in mainstream schools after
emigrating to England, as well as at universities there. I do not hesitate to
call the segregation of Romani children in education the cultural genocide of
the Romani people.

A slightly different, often possibly unconscious antigypsyism is also
widespread among the institutions and nonprofit organizations that are supposed
to help Romani people. Impoverished Romani people are viewed as the objects of
integration, as clients, as persons who do not understand the world in which
they live – as if they were, for example, mentally disabled. That is why the aid
to impoverished Romani communities, the forms it takes and the tools used to
deliver it, are planned at meetings of experts in offices in Prague. After all,
one does not invite the patients to a meeting about the treatment program in the
madhouse. Negotiations about Romani people are held without them. As a result,
every Romani ghetto in the Czech Republic has a CCTV system and not a single one
has a playground.

Where does this antigypsyism come from? It is very often explained as social
in origin, primarily by antigypysists themselves, as follows: “If the Romani
people in the Czech Republic didn’t rob and steal so much, if they weren’t so
dirty and so lazy, if they went to work like everyone else, no one would have
anything against them and there would be no antigypsyism.”

This is the same way anti-Semites explained the reason for anti-Semitism in
interwar Germany: “If the Jews weren’t such profiteers, if they weren’t so
unclean, if they would only stop shirking manual labor, then there would be no
anti-Semitism.” Today such an analysis of the origin of anti-Semitism, at least,
is considered devious and racist. Anti-Semitism, at least, is explained in
psychoanalytic terms, using concepts such as “the need for a scapegoat”, the
darkness in each of us, or suppressed aggression. The sins of all of society are
allotted to the hated minority and even the worst loser can make that minority
the target of his hatred. This is considered socially acceptable.

If it is unconscious, and if majority-society antigypsyism exists for
psychological reasons and not as a result of any characteristics of Romani
people themselves, then the industrial pig farm here is a monument to Czech
antigypsyism and is actually the Czech Republic’s greatest memorial. Until it is
removed, until a dignified memorial to the Romani victims of the Holocaust is
built at that site, the situation of Romani people in the Czech Republic will
never change or improve. As long as this society is capable of running a pig
farm at the site of the genocide of that minority, then it will never accept
them. That much, at least, is obvious.