The Prague Post
December 2nd, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Prague Property

Home » Archives » News

Lety pig farm appeal looks to UN

Few think new government will prioritize Roma rights

By Hilda Hoy
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
February 7th, 2007 issue

Efforts to revive a perennial Roma rights issue are being dampened by doubts that the fragile new government will be able to accomplish something past ones couldn’t: shut down a pig farm in the small town of Lety, south Bohemia.

This farm has been a thorn in the side of Roma rights activists for decades. The reason: The farm, built in the 1970s, sits on the site of a World War II internment camp for Czechoslovak Roma, or Gypsies, who were targeted along with Jews in Hitler’s Final Solution.
According to archives, 1,308 Roma were imprisoned at Lety. A total of 326, many of them children, died there, and a further 500 were sent to an almost certain death at Auschwitz.
“It’s abhorrent,” says Čeněk Růžička, president of the Czech Committee for Compensation of the Romany Holocaust. “It’s a matter of respect for the graves.”
At a press conference at the UN headquarters in New York City Jan. 29, Růžička appealed to the international community to pressure the Czech government to move the farm. The conference coincided with the opening of a photo exhibit at the UN illustrating the Roma Holocaust.

"Our main aim ... was to deliver an appeal to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and to bring Roma rights issues to [the UN's] attention," Růžička told The Prague Post.

This isn’t the first time the international spotlight has been aimed at Lety. In April 2005, the European Parliament approved a resolution calling on the Czech Republic to move the pigs.

Various government initiatives throughout the years have tried — and repeatedly failed — to do just that.
Most recently, in January 2006, then-Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek vowed to resolve the issue.
But, in the campaigning leading up to last June’s national election, Paroubek’s Social Democrats (ČSSD) abandoned the issue, and negotiations ground to a halt. Nearly seven months of government deadlock followed.
New Cabinet, old promises
Whether the new government, which won a confidence vote Jan. 19, will make advancements on the pig farm issue — or other issues affecting Roma such as education, unemployment and owning up to the past practice of sterilizing Romany women — is unclear.
The governing coalition brings together the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), the Christian Democratic Union (KDU-ČSL) and Green Party (SZ).
So far, only one party, the SZ, has officially supported moving the farm.
Lety is an issue few politicians want to touch, says Gwendolyn Albert, a Roma activist and former director of the Czech League of Human Rights.
“Every now and then, some politician picks up the issue … and they suffer for it politically,” she says. Conversely, “an anti-Roma attitude will get you very far in Czech politics.” As example, one needs look no further than Deputy Prime Minister Jiří Čunek, former mayor of Vsetín, east Moravia, who was elected chairman of the KDU-ČSL after evicting a group of Roma from his town.
Because the coalition is unstable, another election could come soon and politicians don’t want to risk losing votes over an issue as polarizing as Roma rights, says Jan Bureš, a political scientist at Charles University.
“This government is weak. I would be surprised if they even opened up this issue,” he says. “The Greens will be left alone, so they will probably step back and not push the issue.”
Albert agrees. Because this is the first time the SZ has made it into the government, the party may not want to rock the boat. “It would be wonderful if the Greens would step up … But they just got in, and they want to stay in.”
The ODS has yet to officially draw up a position on Lety, spokesman Jiří Sezemský says: “At this moment, we are not concerned about this topic.”
However, during the ČSSD’s campaign last year to move the farm, the ODS dissented. “We considered the costs too high and preferred to just build a monument elsewhere,” Sezemský says. “But this is our party’s old point of view, and I don’t know about a new one.”
The Christian Democrats are similarly ambiguous.
“The KDU-ČSL wants to contribute to a reasonable solution to the problem,” spokesman Martin Horálek says, but won’t elaborate on what that ideal solution would be.
The parties will be guided strongly by public opinion, Bureš says.
“Polls have showed a considerable number of people are against tearing down the pig farm,” partly because of the cost and partly out of anti-Roma sentiment, he says. “And politicians know that, and they need votes.”
Whatever the government’s moves, Růžička says he will continue to seek international support.
“The Romany Holocaust must be recognized in the same way as the Jewish Holocaust,” he says. “That’s what we fight for.”
Hela Balínová and Naďa Černá contributed to this report.

Hilda Hoy can be reached at hhoy@praguepost.com


Other articles in News (7/02/2007):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.