Racial tensions rooted in real estate profiteers

Violent clashes between police and protesters in Varnsdorf were the latest volley in a continuing cycle of chaos in north Bohemia, as local residents increasingly turn their attention to opportunistic real estate profiteers who may be among the direct contributors to recent unrest.

Tensions between the Roma minority and white residents remain high, and the far-right Workers Party for Social Justice (DSSS) capitalized on the situation by staging three protests Sept. 10. The largest and most confrontational of these marches took place in Varnsdorf, where the crowd tried to charge a Roma housing project and had to be dispersed by police water cannons and tear gas.

More than 40 people were detained for questioning, and six were injured, including three police officers. Some 600 police were deployed in Varnsdorf, Nový Bor and Rumburk, and the operation cost some 3 million Kč.

"The situation only began to calm down after several uncompromising interventions and the detention of aggressors," police spokeswoman Jarmila Hrubešová said.

An influx of Roma to small towns in the region may be at the core of the recent clashes, which also have roots in decades of social neglect and continued cuts to welfare benefits.

"The Ústí region began intentionally moving Gypsies from Most into the Šluknov area," said one local resident, who declined to be named. "Just to give an idea: 20 Roma families have moved into the town of Dolní Poustevna, which has 3,000 inhabitants."

Formerly vacant buildings have been converted into dormitory-style living with landlords able to collect state subsidies for providing housing to the socially disadvantaged.

"The truth is in Varnsdorf, there are a whole lot of businessmen who keep buying flats from the city - cheap flats," said Zdeněk Štěpánek, a teacher who lives in Varnsdorf. "They make a new facade, but otherwise it is all deteriorated inside and a bunch of Gypsies live there. The rent is paid from the state funds directly to these businessmen."

The influx of these largely unemployed Roma has seen crime in the Šluknov region spike this year and exacerbated an already precarious economic situation.

"There is a problem with the social system in the Czech Republic," said Miroslav Brož, a human rights activist based in Ústí nad Labem and founder of the new Hatred Is Not a Solution group, which has staged counterdemonstrations to the far right.  

"It was reduced after the last elections because of the economic crisis. There are no jobs in north Bohemia for people with no qualifications, so these poor Gypsies have no opportunity to work, and their social benefits were reduced. Politicians are paid to solve these problems."

Mayors from north Bohemia called on Prime Minister Petr Nečas to intervene, accusing him of a lack of interest in an open letter Sept. 12.

"Your silence has provoked fears in us that you either do not want or are not able to solve our problems, or in the worst-case scenario, that you are not interested in solving them," the letter said.

"At the moment, 60,000 citizens are waiting for you. They are angry with the fact that neither you nor your government has expressed clear words about how you want to and will solve the problems with crime and violence by the unadaptable in this region as well as in the whole country."

"Unadaptable" is used as a euphemism for Roma in the letter.

The Nečas government has drawn repeated criticism for its human rights policies since taking office, as has the Czech Republic generally for failing to react to a 2007 European Court of Human Rights ruling that schools were systematically diverting Roma youth into special education programs.

"The ongoing unrest is quite unique in that this is the first time ever, to my knowledge, that local people in the Czech Republic have so publicly and repeatedly attempted to commit vigilante violence against their Roma neighbors," said longtime Roma rights activist Gwendolyn Albert.

"The government's response is cynical in the extreme, as is its attempt to exploit this unrest to advertise the 'solution' of its harsher social welfare policy."

Brož and his group, alongside religious leaders, helped create a barrier between protesters and Roma housing projects as crowds approached Sept. 10.

"Our opinion is that these marches come from hate, which doesn't solve anything," Brož said.

"They just make the situation even worse. … This problem has been going on for 20 years now, and nobody has done anything about it. We can't expect this problem will be solved in one year or five years. This problem will take at least 20 years to solve."

- Klára Jiřičná and Cat Contiguglia contributed to this report.

Benjamin Cunningham can be reached at
bcunningham@praguepost.com