MfD: Court activism cannot change Czech Roma problems

Prague, Feb 6 (CTK) - Changes forced by courts will not help solve problems of people living on the edge of Czech society, whether they are Roma or anybody else, Roman Kristof writes in Mlada fronta Dnes Saturday.

"We are living at a time of court activism where politics has made law into its major instrument of pushing through its goals," Kristof writes and adds that laws do not correspond with reality.

He writes that this is particularly evident in pushing through the "policy of identity," or idealisation of minorities by a branch known as human-rights industry for which the difficult situation of Roma is a breeding ground.

Kristof writes that tens of thousands of Roma have settled in the Czech Lands over the past 50 years within one of the biggest migration shifts in post-wear Europe.

Most of them came from shanty settlements in eastern Slovakia and most of them were illiterate.

Kristof writes that in 1971 some 10 percent of Romani children were attending kindergartens while in 1980 the percentage grew to 58.5.

Kristof writes that Pavel Bratinka, in his capacity as a member of the government council for nationalities, wrote in a 1997 report that "the Romani population in the Czech Republic has registered the most dynamic social rise of all social groups of population after World War Two."

This was the first post-communist document based on sociological research.

The sole affirmative project has been underway in the Czech Republic since 2000. It rests in financial support to Romani pupils attending secondary schools, Kristof writes.

He writes that he initiated the programme at the time when he was a government official and that he hoped that such a programme will gradually turn into support to all underprivileged, not only Romani children, but this has not happened to date.

Kristof recalls a complaint by the Budapest-based European Roma Centre against the Czech Republic in which it claimed that the Czech state violated the right of 18 Romani children from the Ostrava vicinity, north Moravia, to education and the ban on discrimination when they were sent to special schools.

The Czech Constitutional Court eventually acknowledged the complaint after some twists and ruled that every child will be compensated with 4000 euros, Kristof writes.

He writes that a government report on the fulfilling of the court decision of last June says "the problems of education of socially disadvantaged pupils are generally strongly ethnicised though the sets of socially underprivileged people and Roma overlap only partially and a majority of respondents from among teachers dismiss such identification."

If the answer to the question whether it is possible to identify social disadvantage with ethnicity is in the negative, then affirmative measures must be taken according to the substantiated social disadvantages of pupils and not according to the colour of their skin or presumed ethnicity, Kristof writes.

He writes that many factors must be taken into consideration to change the situation of people living on the edge of society that court verdicts cannot embrace.

"Efforts to transplant to Central Europe the American struggle for human rights based on the ideas of American lawyers from the European Roma Centre can only lead to a greater division of (Czech) society," Kristof writes.