Prague, Oct 18 (CTK) – The flow of migrants to the Czech Republic has stopped, the number of foreigners crossing the Czech territory has declined, Interior Minister Milan Chovanec said in a discussion on TV Prima Sunday.
In the past days, the Czech police daily detained only five to seven people who entered the country illegally. The police return these refugees to Austria “within a two-week deadline,” Chovanec (Social Democrats, CSSD) said.
He said the conditions in the Czech foreigner detention facilities operated by the Interior Ministry correspond to the 21st-century level. He wants to meet Ombudsman Anna Sabatova, who criticised the conditions recently.
“The migrant flow to our country has stopped. The numbers [of refugees] have declined,” Chovanec said.
In reaction to Sabatova’s statement that the living conditions in the Bela-Jezova detention facility, central Bohemia, are worse than in Czech prisons and are unsuitable for families with children, Chovanec said the conditions correspond to the 21st-century level.
He said another two facilities are being opened in Drahonice, north Bohemia, and Balkova, west Bohemia, and a section for mothers with children is being established in one facility.
“The conditions in our country are much better than at the Keleti railway station in Hungary, and we still focus on human rights observance,” Chovanec said.
The Christian Social Platform of the government Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD) has said in a declaration, released by the Denik referendum Internet daily, that Prague’s approach to refugees is too repressive, which goes counter to the CSSD’s values and the country’s interests.
The declaration’s 14 signatories include senator and former interior minister Frantisek Bublan (for the CSSD). They call on the CSSD leadership to push for a change.
“To offer a new home to the people who would often mean a contribution to our society in many respects, is correct not only from the humanitarian point of view but also from the purely pragmatic one,” the Platform wrote.
The CSSD, which controls the Interior Ministry, should help stop the practice of detaining refugees, the Platform added.
Czech NGOs, too, have criticised the government for approaching refugees merely as a “security problem” without making efforts to help them.
As a result, refugees have been mainly dealt with by the police and the Interior Ministry, but not by other ministries, the NGOs said.
Chovanec said the Czech Republic will be unable to do without migrants in the future, but “a mass [immigration] wave is unsuitable.”
He said he wants to spread vigilance, not xenophobia.
By no means is the Czech Republic xenophobic in a situation where its 10.5-million population includes a half million foreigners, he said.
According to the Statistical Office (CSU), 458,229 foreigners lived in the Czech Republic as from July 1, a large part of them coming from the EU. There were about 99,000 Slovaks, almost 20,000 Poles and over 20,000 Germans, according to the CSU.
Chovanec said he is afraid that migrants have been coming to Europe with great expectations, since people-smugglers “promised them total nonsense.” Once in Europe, most of them quickly understand that they will remain second-rank citizens for a long time.
“We must tell the world that we want to help people in their respective home countries and that they should not go to us,” Chovanec said.
