Prague, Oct 3 (CTK) – Dozens of people from the Czech Republic apply for political asylum abroad, but Czech authorities do not seem interested in their cases, weekly Tyden writes in its issue out on Monday, referring to the OECD statistics registering 108 Czech asylum seekers from May 2015 to April 2016.
The Czech interior and foreign ministries know nothing about any cases of Czech asylum seekers, Tyden writes.
“Nobody has consulted this with us,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Irena Valentova said. She said the Interior Ministry might know more about those people.
“We only deal with migrants who arrive in the Czech Republic,” Interior Ministry spokeswoman Hana Mala told Tyden.
According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 128 asylum seekers came from the Czech Republic and 1285 people from the Czech Republic had refugee status in 2015, the weekly writes.
However, part of the asylum seekers probably are of Czech origin, but they live in regions hit by war.
The number is also likely to include Romanies who massively left the Czech Republic around 2010 due to racism and discrimination and who mostly headed for Britain and Canada. The asylum procedure sometimes lasts several years and the applications of many of the Romanies may still be dealt with, Tyden writes.
Some people nevertheless leave the country for exclusively political reasons. In May 2016, Czech blogger Petr Michalu applied for asylum in Russia. Michalu, an admirer of Vladimir Putin, told Russian media that he has always loved Russia and that he cannot live in the Czech environment where so many lies are told about Russia, Tyden writes.
As expected, the number of foreigners who apply for asylum in the Czech Republic is higher than the number of Czech asylum applicants, the weekly writes.
From May 2015 to April 2016, 1027 foreigners applied for Czech asylum, Tyden writes, citing data of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The OECD data show that 616 and 248 people from the neighbouring post-communist Slovakia and Poland, respectively, applied for asylum abroad in the given period of time, the weekly writes.
According to the Interior Ministry, 996 people, mostly Ukrainians and Iraqis, have so far sought asylum in the Czech Republic this year. This is a very small number compared with the neighbouring Germany that has been recently flooded by hundreds of thousands refugees. But the number of seekers of Czech asylum might increase if the refugees whose asylum applications are rejected by German authorities start coming to the Czech Republic, Tyden writes.
