Fighting Back

(Picture above is of a Romani girl who fled to Canada, the scars on her chest were put there during a racial attack she suffered in the Czech Republic)
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Tensions Rising in Czech Republic
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The old phrase "out of sight, out of mind" seems to be proving itself wrong once again in the Czech Republic. As the government encourages the forcible moving of Roma families from all over the country to the Sluknov foothills area. This move is just the start of a new wave of ghettoizing the Roma minority in the Czech Republic. A system of social exclusion that is now spawning the need for state intervention through violent reactions to a system the government created.
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But before I get at the reason for the violence let me first explain the attacks a little further.
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Tensions appear to have begun growing as the waves of new Roma families began to appear in the Sluknov area. Racial tensions then continued to grow as the "majority population" began to organize anti-Roma events in protest of the continued arrival of Roma (who didn't want to be in the Slukov area anyhow). And yet nothing was really going too awfully wrong till about a week ago.
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That is when the racial tensions flared up (literally) when Molotovs began to fly. Attacks on Roma families began to be reported as the far-right continued to organize. Families that had been removed from areas of the Czech Republic where they had been victimized were now being attacked in Northern Bohemia.
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However it wasn't till a couple days ago that the Roma began to fight back. That was when a racial attack surpassed all others in its shear brutality. A delivery van driver was reported to have rapidly accelerated as he drove over a five year old Roma boy. The majority population however seems to have united behind the delivery driver as they continue to blame the dead boy for the racial attack that ended his life.
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This is what led to the attacks on the "majority" by the minority population. Roma have finally stomached enough violence to be ready to unleash some of their own. And thus you end up with attacks like the one a day ago when twenty Roma attacked four "majority population" men.
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The attack was brutal in nature and ended up with one of the victims in the hospital with broken bones. The Romani had attacked the four men outside and then broken in their door to attack the four men in their home. They had even used clubs of some sort in the attack on the "majority".
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So how does this sort of issue arise so quickly?
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Well first of all it has been an issue that has been bubbling to the surface for some time now. It began way back in 1989 when the economy in the Czech Republic sort of crashed. Roma who had worked just like everyone else in the economy were the first to be given the pink slips. As a result they were forced out of the productive society and into the world of welfare.
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For two generations now the Roma have been doing anything they can to get back on their feet. This would have been easier had the Czech government not taken the actions it did earlier this year. Now we are witnessing how that second generation, a generation that no longer remembers what it is to work for a living, reacts to being forced into a ghetto lifestyle.
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Earlier this year the Czech government took actions it claims are to reduce the debt of government by cutting its expenditures. It is choosing to do this by cutting the Romani people out of the welfare state it created three decades ago. It is not however choosing to find ways to put these people back to work. It is not attempting to find ways to grow its taxable population by decreasing its welfare population through honest labor.
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Like the rioters in London these Romani are people who know a life that the state has provided for them. Every attempt to break free from this sort of indentured servitude proves unsuccessful for most Roma. Even a college education proves useless when the "majority population" seems unshakable in their resolve to exclude the Roma. They are after all the first to loose their jobs and the last to be hired back into the work force.
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Thus we have a situation that seems tailor made for the Czech government. A situation where only the strong arm of the law can solve the issue at hand. And that always makes people like me a little worried.
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In both the past and present the Czech government has shown an over willingness to ghettoize the Roma. The Czech government seems to have a love affair with forcing the Roma out of secular society. And this recent out break of racial violence (violence that the Czech government should had seen coming with the current rise of far-right rhetoric) forces a situation which only the law can handle.
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We will have to wait to see what happens but in my humble opinion this problem has no happy ending. Violence begets violence. And the result of this violent outbreak can only serve to fuel the flames of the fascist movement in Eastern Europe.
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Source Documents (Note that not all sources used are listed)
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Prague Monitor
http://praguemonitor.com/2011/08/22/romani-group-reportedly-attacks-four-men-north-bohemia
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Romea.cz
http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2725
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2714
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2711
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2727
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2706
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CBC News Canada
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2009/06/25/roma-czech-asylum062509.html