Kostelec nad Orlicí,

EAST BOHEMIA

"Czech people are good," says Roz Shero, a dark-eyed 15-year-old girl, pausing for a moment from her ironing.

It's the kind of comment you might expect from a Western tourist who just finished an enjoyable week in Prague or touring Bohemian castles. It's not what you'd expect from a young woman who's been stateless for nearly a year and is now looking at a wait of three to five more years for her asylum application to be ruled on by the Interior Ministry.

Shero dresses more like an American suburban teen than a Kurdish refugee who fled Syria because she was considered a noncitizen in her home country — but she speaks from experience. Shero tried to shorten her wait by applying for asylum in Germany and Belgium, but was returned to the Czech Republic after authorities found out she already had an application on file here.

Under 1993 European Union regulations known as the Dublin rules, asylum seekers must apply in the country where they first land or obtain a visa. Applying somewhere else is likely to get you a rude return to the place you first began the tortuous process — just as it did for Shero.

"It was this," she says, holding up her index finger and grinning self-consciously to convey being found out through fingerprint comparisons. Despite the frustrations of the sometimes glacial process, Shero feels mainly gratitude toward the Czech Republic for at least taking her plight seriously.

"Syria is for Arabic people," she says. "It is not for Kurds. I have no passport."

Shero does at least have a friend who understands what she's been through: Amani Ibrahim, who provides moral support while Shero irons, is also an ethnic Kurd living at the Kostelec center who escaped Syria, hoping for a better life for her 6-month-old girl, Sidra.

These three, part of a global crisis in displaced people fleeing war, persecution or starvation, are just three of the estimated 2,000 refugees who will land in the Czech Republic by the end of this year. The Kostelec facility, one of 15 such centers, houses 250 refugees from 10 countries who live, and wait, and try to make the most of their situation. That influx is only a fraction of that in the peak year since 1990. In 2001, some 18,094 people applied for asylum in the Czech Republic, a wave observers put down to Czechs joining the EU, an event refugees believed would extend access to a Western lifestyle. Numbers have fallen almost every year since.

At Kostelec, every surface of this sprawling pink-washed facility is scrubbed clean, and newly washed clothes dry on racks in every hall.

Children, without much else to play with, make drums out of old wooden theater seats in a stairwell. Their finger paintings provide most of the art in this looming, high-ceilinged complex. They're healthy, clean and get a lot of affection from parents, who have, along with the Czech staff, somehow created a communal atmosphere.

The waiting game

Although hundreds of asylum cases drag on for years, the Interior Ministry is empowered to make a ruling on granting or denying what it now terms "international protection granting" within 60 days, according to Radka Kováfiová, spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry. "In a vast majority of cases the ministry is able to maintain this deadline," she says.

But, she notes, asylum seekers have the right to appeal this decision in court and there is no deadline on when a judge must rule. Efforts have been made to streamline the process, which has been criticized by local human rights organizations, says Kováfiová.

The Ombudsman's Office has also criticized refugee centers for a laundry list of shortcomings, including not providing copies of asylum application files, security cameras that invade privacy and insufficient nutrients in the food.

Life in the Kostelec refugee center resembles one at a strict boarding school — though certainly not one for wealthy brats.

Residents get free housing and meals, share bathrooms, live in the dorms of retired government facilities or hospitals, are under the constant gaze of security cameras (at least in communal areas) and spend a lot of time scrubbing and dreaming. After Czech classes, their children are allowed to attend the local public elementary school; one year after applying for asylum they are allowed to seek employment at whatever jobs they can find. They get medical care, a small cash allowance and, if there's no male head of the family, housing in a women and children's dorm you must be buzzed into.

Coping with the flood

Overall, it's a creaky system, but no creakier than in the rest of the EU, says Svatopluk Karásek, head of the Czech Human Rights Commission. Still, he admits, those wending their way through it do often find the process "psychologically and socially depressing."

What's more, the Czech Republic has an acceptance rate for asylum seekers of around 3.5 percent, while the EU average is closer to 24.6 percent, according to the 2004 figures from United Nations High Commission on Refugees, the most recent data available. But, says Karásek, since he assumed his post in late 2004, the Czech Republic has not garnered any particular international criticism for its asylum system.

At the same time, he says, "I have received complaints from individuals, asylum seekers. They write that the process is taking too long. Which is true; they have to wait a long time for their applications to be evaluated."

It's also a system that has its limits. Two Ukrainian men with substance-abuse problems pass their time idly at the Kostelec center, where Hana Šveráková, a supervisor, explains with some embarrassment that the Interior Ministry's asylum system has no funds for special medication for addicts.

Just last week, a group of 90 Egyptians being processed in the Czech Republic escaped from two refugee centers in Vyšní Lhoty, north Moravia, and Velké Pfiílepy, near Prague, most likely on their way to a wealthier country farther west. A witness said the Egyptians had paid $1,500 (32,970 Kč) each to a gang that told them they could be taken to France or Germany, but they found themselves dumped here instead.

The Czech asylum system, as it does worldwide, reflects all the current trouble spots of the world.

Kazakhstan and Belarus, where refugees say the state regimes actively persecute Muslims, account for a new wave of westward-bound refugees. These two groups are in first and second place among the current numbers of asylum seekers in the Czech Republic, with 183 and 161, respectively (such refugees interviewed requested their last names not be used for fear of reprisals against their families back home). Russians and Ukrainians follow, with Iraq, Armenia and India next, at some distance, with numbers at 26 or below.

For Shero and Ibrahim, statistics don't tell the story, however. When asked how they see the asylum system, they just grin shyly and say again, "People are good here."