Prague, May 16 (CTK) – Czech activists have asked the EU to halt its subsidies to the pig farm situated in Lety, south Bohemia, on a site where a Romany internment camp stood during World War Two, in the belief that this may help oust the pig farm from the Romany Holocaust memorial site.
They handed the appeal to the EC mission in Prague on Monday.
Jan Michal, who heads the EC mission, however, said it is the relevant member country that chooses the subsidy recipients.
“A solution to the present scandalous situation is very simple. We have found out that the pig farm on the site of Romany genocide has been receiving European agricultural subsidies. Without the subsidies, it would become loss-making and go bankrupt soon,” Miroslav Broz, from the Konexe NGO, said.
Michal said the question is sensitive from human viewpoint and also in terms of values, and the coping with the past is up to individual countries.
“The EC manages the common agricultural policy, but the subsidy recipients are chosen by individual member countries,” Michal wrote to CTK
In their appeal, the activists write that the pig farm was built in Lety in 1973. After the collapse of the communist regime in 1989, it was acquired by a private firm.
The Czech Republic has long faced criticism from international institutions over the pig farm standing on the commemorative place.
Czech governments previously tried to find a solution. The scenario of the state buying and pulling down the farm was discussed. The costs were estimated at hundreds of millions of crowns.
Several days ago, Human Rights Minister Jiri Dienstbier (Social Democrats, CSSD) mentioned the continuing negotiations with the pig farm’s operator, but said the talks have been inconclusive and the pig farm will probably be preserved.
Broz, however, said that there has never been the least real political will to buy and pull down the farm.
“The [official] promises only served to appease human rights institutions abroad,” he said.
The Lety camp was opened in August 1940 as a labour and disciplinary camp. A similar facility existed in Hodonin u Kunstatu, south Moravia. In January 1942, both camps were turned into internment ones and in August of the same year, Romany camps were established there.
A total of 1308 Romanies passed through the Lety camp until May 1943 and 327 of them died there. Another 500 were transferred to Oswiecim.
A total of 6,500 Romanies lived in the wartime Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Fewer than 600 returned from concentration camps. According to estimates, the Nazis murdered 90 percent of Czech Romany population.
The Czech government pledged in its Romany strategy until 2020 to arrange the removal of the pig farm from Lety. The ministers of culture, human rights and finance are supposed to cooperate on solving the problem by the end of 2018.
Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka (CSSD), however, has said his government will not probably find money to buy out the pig farm.
