Sun, Oct 17, 1999 page7

• Czechs' liberal reputation sullied by treatment of Gypsies

  The erection in a Czech town of a wall to separate a Gypsy community from its non-Gypsy neighbors has evoked comparison with Nazi-era ghettos

  • By Kate Connolly / THE GUARDIAN
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  A decade after the fall of post-war Europe's paramount symbol of human division, the Berlin Wall, a concrete barrier has been erected in a northern Czech town to split off a Gypsy community from its non-Gypsy neighbors.

  The construction of the wall -- two meters high and 65 meters long -- in the town of Usti nad Labem has led human rights organizations to draw on comparisons with the Nazi era, when Jews and Gypsies were ghettoized.

  The European Union's commission has called for the barrier's immediate demolition, warning the Czech government to "act promptly" or, it is implied, damage its prospects for EU membership.

  The idea for the wall came up 18 months ago in Usti, a town of 100,000 -- 15 percent of them Gypsies or Roma. Home owners on one side of Maticni Street were complaining about "anti-social and unhygienic behavior" of Gypsy "rent defaulters" living in a housing block just across the street. The municipal authorities voted in favor for the wall.

  Months went by, during which opponents fought the scheme, though finding inconceivable the idea that it would actually go ahead. But in the early hours of a foggy Wednesday morning this week while the Gypsies slept, builders crept into the street flanked by 90 policemen.

  While the police surrounded the housing block, the workers began piecing together prefabricated concrete units supported by steel girders. This is the wall in place now. Three brown steel doors were also put in place to allow access to the block; they are not yet in use but the plan is to lock them at 10 every night.

  "We woke up in the morning to find the wall half-finished," said Lidie Demeterova, 40, leaning out of her second-floor window above the custard-yellow and brown construction.

  "The police, like Gestapo, wouldn't let us out of our homes until they'd finished it in the evening," she added.

  According to opinion polls, a third of Czechs are for the wall. The Czech parliament voted against it, saying it was illegal as the relevant planning permission had not been received. The vote was held two hours after the work was completed.

  The government is due to discuss the affair tomorrow but officials in Usti say they will go to the constitutional court to fight to keep the wall.

  Human rights groups and some members of the Czech government have, condemned the wall from the start, which has become a stark example to the world of how an ethnic group is treated in the Czech Republic.

  The waves of Gypsies citing racial discrimination and leaving the country during the past two years -- to seek refuge in Canada and in European countries, particularly Britain -- had already put the Czechs in an adverse light.

  The Czech Republic is the source country for more asylum seekers to Britain than any other country in central Europe. Many have been sent back, but 2,500 Czech Gypsies are currently believed to be in Britain waiting for news of their claims.

  As a result Britain has threatened to reintroduce the visa requirement for Czechs as it did for Slovakia last year.

  The mayor of the Nestimice district of Usti, Pavel Tosovsky, said the town hall was standing by its decision. The solid wall was "just a fence," put up as a noise barrier and as part of a general program to "revitalize the area." The Gypsies, he added, were at liberty to decorate it.

  Non-Gypsy residents have applauded the council's steadfast stand on the wall. "Isn't it pretty? You're not normal if you don't think so," said Eva Kompertova, landlady of the inn At the Port which sits a stone's throw from the Elbe river on the corner of Maticni.

  "Now the next step is to get rid of them altogether. If only your Queen didn't keep rejecting them. Tell her she can have them all for just 1,000 crowns (US$32) apiece." Sitting in a corner of the pub, glass of beer in hand, Ladislav Berko, 39 -- a Maticni Street resident and Gypsy -- was keen to rebut rumors that the Gypsies from the block were rent defaulters.

  From a burgundy wallet he took receipts for payment of his 2000 crown (US$64) monthly rent.

  He was relieved that the wall was up, he said. His sister, Maria, left her flat in Maticni Street to go to England seven months ago after she and her husband were attacked by skinheads. "Actually it makes me feel a bit safer. I haven't been attacked yet and maybe this will stop the skinheads coming for us."

  The Czech political establishment has been shocked by the waves of criticism from Brussels. The chairman of the chamber of deputies, Vaclav Klaus, said: "I see walls in Northern Ireland which are far greater in significance than that in Maticni Street and no one threatens to expel Britain from the EU."

  Lidie Demeterova said that the Usti affair was just the latest chapter in the persecution that the "phantom nation" of Gypsies in central and eastern Europe have faced -- in the Nazi Holocaust, under the communists, and now under the social-democrat Czech government of Milos Zeman.

  Two other Czech towns, Vsetetin and Rokycany, are talking about walls too. "Who knows where this persecution will stop?" Demeterova said.

  "For many a wall is not enough. Ideally they'd like to build underground tunnels for us."
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