Left To The Wolves

Preparing for Porajmos
(Part of The Darkness Visible series)

As attacks on Roma continue to escalate in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Romania the rest of Europe seems complacent as they ramp up attempts to deport their Romani populations. In France it has become evident that the police are more like the SS than civil servants... no longer enlisted to protect and serve but rather harass and deport. In England the Roma live in constant fear that the government's bipolar disorder might switch for the worse. Yet now we watch the rest of the world begins to turn its back on the Roma once again.

Canada and the United States have both recently begun to take steps to deny entry and to deport Roma within their borders. Canada claims that the Roma who came to Canada to seek refuge from Hungarian pogroms no longer deserve to stay within Canada as refugees. In doing this the Canadians must first ignore the rise of violence against Roma communities throughout Eastern Europe, let alone within Hungary itself. Secondly the Canadian government will have to ignore the fact that the Hungarian government may not be willing to allow the Roma back into Hungary.

We are watching as the most abused and neglected people within Europe are once again facing ethnic cleansing. Pogroms have already begun to take shape in Hungary and the Czech Republic. These violent flash mobs are part of daily life for Roma within Romania, Bulgaria, and other Balkan states. Now we have the other hallmark of ethnic cleansing... deportations.

France has been the leader in this deplorable act of fascism. In France today the police wear jackboots and even strap on red armbands. The "democracy" of France no longer recognizes the civil liberties they claim to uphold as they now pick who has the right to live free and who must leave or die.

The bulldozing of camps, burning of caravans, and beatings of Roma citizens can not be overlooked. The bastions of freedom can not be allowed to operate in a manner that mirrors the crimes of their Nazi past. And with that I know I may be pushing the envelope with some...

But was it not the brown shirts in Washington who lobbied for our government to set on the sidelines while Hitler put Roma in the first concentration camps? Was it not the Vichy regime who helped the SS gather up France's Roma for the first Porajmos? And was it not Germany that gave us the horrors of the Holocaust in the first place?

All these governments have had their failures when it comes to the Roma. Now they are slipping into the darkness of their past failures once again. Over the past decade alone we have become apathetic when dealing with the right wing and their anti-Romani demands. We have watched as groups like Jobbik in Hungary have grown out of control. We have remained silent while French president after president has wrongfully deported French citizens....

Again, for those of you who disagree with me.... France's dragnet approach at rounding up Romani who have illegally immigrated to France has been used to deport Roma who have lived and were born in France. It was an inevitable consequence of actions that originated in the radical right wing of France's government. And it continues even as a left wing socialist rules as president.

None the less the West is setting up all the right conditions for another genocide of the Romani people. When we allow people to be loaded up on planes (or cattle cars) and be sent away we condone the first part of ethnic cleansing. When we allow politicians or political parties (Jobbik for example) to publicly push for violence in any manner against a group of people we condone the final solution.

This post isn't meant to blindly accuse any one government. It is meant to blame all the Western world of once again failing to uphold our pledge of "NEVER AGAIN". It is time to wake up. It is time to uphold the rights of all mankind; regardless of their ethnicity, religion, or livelihoods. It is time to start working to set right all the areas of civil rights in which our parents generation and their parents generation failed.

Romani Man Attacked By Czech Police

"World's Best Police"
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On Saturday, October 29th, a Romani man in the embattled Northern Bohemia reports to have been strangled and further attacked by Czech Police. The officers were in fact two members of the SPJ Praha, the Czech Special Forces Unit - Prague Patrol. And their actions, racially motivated, are not being investigated or punished.
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Mr Ladislav Bíllý, a Czech Roma man, claims that around 4pm the first officer surprised him on his own property. In a matter of moments the second officer darted in and grabbed Ladislav by the throat. The officer proceeded to slam Mr Ladislav into the wall with his hand firmly gripping Ladislav's windpipe.
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'Shut up and be polite' the aggressive officer shouted in Ladislav's face as he began berating the Roma man. The officer, who was trespassing, demanded Ladislav's identity papers. All the while the first officer stood by and did nothing to stop the attack.
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After a short time Ladislav convinced the aggressive officer to let him go and that his identity papers were in his car. Suddenly the second officer became even more irate. It appeared to the Roma man that having to walk a few meters to his car had made the officer even more aggressive.
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Once at the car, a Volkswagen Golf, the aggressive cop yelled at Ladislav very loudly, "Don't piss me off anymore you black swine."
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When the Roma's papers were produced the officers demanded the car's papers. Once the car's documents were produced the officers called for reinforcements. Now there were six officers. All six special unit officers proceeded to trash the car as they "searched" it without a search warrant or permission.
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Finally Mr Ladislav had had enough. He demanded the officers get off his private property. The aggressive officers had a shouting match before leaving. The entire time they were there they had covered their service numbers... masking their identity.
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The "Blue Line" in Czech police forces is rarely crossed. This means no cops rat out other cops. Thus their criminal behavior goes unpunished.
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As for the Romani people in the Šluknov hills the police are just as dangerous as are their "ethnic white" neighbors. The SPJ units are even more dangerous. They are able to get away with murder and never are punished.
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Source Document, note that not all sources are listed.
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Romea.cz
http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2935
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Racial Tensions Still Rising

Romani Still Targeted By "Ethnic Majority"
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As local police struggle to push back the hordes of racially charged "ethnic Bulgarians" and "White Czechs" the special police units are pulling out. The petrol bombs may have stopped flying for the time being but the racist crowds have not stopped massing. And it is this fact that has many Roma in Northern Bohemia worried.
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In the Czech Republic local "ethnically Czech" peoples have resorted to finding new ways to drive the Roma out of Bohemia. Some have pooled their money together to purchase the homes of Roma without the consent of the Roma themselves. Others have begun trying to push legislation to make public bans on Roma living in their select villages. All in all, the sounds echoing out of Bohemia are starting to sound more and more like the Nazi era.
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In Bulgaria the white population has still refused to stop their assault on Roma. Burning and torching of Roma homes continues as police fight to keep the assailants at bay. When out in public the Bulgarian Roma now have to fear random style attacks by neo-Nazi inspired youth. These same attacks have been used for years in Russia to target Islamic immigrants from former USSR held territories. It is a tactic used by the Russian neo-Nazi movement.
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The only good news coming out of the region is that some action is being taken to combat the rise of ethnic violence. In the Czech Republic today 14 Czechs face charges for assaulting Roma for racial reasons. This sort of action is finally starting to become the normal reaction in the Czech Republic instead of the old reaction of doing nothing.
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In Bulgaria however the news is still sour at best. Journalist who show any sympathy for the Roma or even fairness in their reporting are called "Jews". The use of the old scapegoat as an insult shows just how far Bulgaria has fallen. They are now bathing in the Nazi doctrine. And there isn't any sign of hope for their revival any time soon.
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Source Documents, please note not all documents used are shown below.
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The Prauge Post
http://www.praguepost.com/news/10461-police-pull-back-in-north-bohemia.html
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Romea.cz
http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2908
http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2909
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Prauge Daily Monitor
http://praguemonitor.com/2011/10/25/fourteen-czechs-face-racism-charges-assaulting-roma
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The Guardian (blog)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2011/oct/24/bulgaria-press-freedom?newsfeed=true
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Novinite.com
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=132646

Educational Discrimination Against Romani Children Part of Czech Unrest

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Czech Television station ČT24 has posted an article to its website reporting on the connection between the current unrest in Šluknov district and discrimination against Romani people in the schools. Such discrimination has been linked for decades in the Czech Republic to the provision of special education.
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The unrest in Šluknov region is rooted in the ongoing discrimination being practiced against Romani children at elementary schools there. For decades, the state has permitted intellectually healthy Romani children to be educated at schools for the intellectually disabled. After the practice was criticized, the state renamed the schools concerned, changing "special" ("zvláštní") schools into "practical" ("praktické") ones. Irremediable harm has been done to these children, because without a normal education, Romani people have no chance on the labor market. Among Romani residents of the residential hotel in Varnsdorf which police officers have been protecting from attack by non-Romani locals recently, only half of the local children currently attend mainstream schools.
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A full 27 % of Romani children without intellectual disabilities are still attending the renamed "special" schools throughout the country. "Special schools are intended for the intellectually disabled. Tell me: Is it possible for such a high percentage of any population to be intellectually disabled?" asks Iveta Němečková, a special needs educator.
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There are 400 ghettos total in the Czech Republic where an estimated 30 000 children live. Just like their parents when they were of pre-school age, many of these children have small vocabularies in Czech, may not yet know the words for colors or shapes (or may not distinguish colors), and may not yet grasp certain concepts. However, they are not intellectually backward, just socially deprived. They therefore have even more of a need for a normal education. "That's how they become familiar with the majority society, how they establish relationships with other children and start perceiving social norms and values in a natural way," said Klára Fischerová, a special needs educator working at the Lyčkovo náměstí Elementary School in Karlín.
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In 2007, the Czech Republic lost a case at the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg, which found in favor of Romani citizens who complained they had been unjustifiably educated in special schools. The practice is continuing and has been criticized by the Czech School Inspectorate and the ombudsman.
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Segregated education has a sad tradition of devastating impacts among the Roma. Those living in the ghettos today are often graduates of the days when special education was developed in full in Czechoslovakia during the 1970s. "A disproportionate percentage of the Romani population were educated in special schools, as many as 70 % of Romani children at the height of the practice," Němečková pointed out.
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According to a World Bank study published last year, eight out of 10 Romani people currently of economically productive age have only ever completed an elementary education. If their children don't get a chance for a better education, they will end up on welfare. The situation is a vicious circle.
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"It's not true that information has not been available about this, but for some reason there has never been interest at the highest levels, such as the Czech Education Ministry, or even in regional government. If we don't address this now, it will catch up to us in time," said Ivan Gabal, a sociologist and author of several pieces of research into the unequal position of Romani children.
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The state already knows how to address the situation. One elementary school in Prague's Karlín neighborhood could serve as a model, where rich and successful people are neighbors with families living in existential deprivation and everyone sends their children to the same schools.
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"The children are satisfied, that's important. We are the clients of these children and their parents, so we want to guarantee education for all," school director Jan Korda said. The Romani population of the school is 10 %, or two or three pupils in each class. Class 6.B also includes a girl of Vietnamese origin and a hearing-disabled boy. They live on the same street and attend the same class.
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"We're all children and we should be friends, not be separated," said Anežka Novotná from class 6.B. Whether the situation will change in Šluknov district remains an open question.
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Romea.cz Article
http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2813

Stepping Stones

To Hell.
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As tensions in the Northern part of the Czech Republic continues to build the violence continues to spark. Just recently we reported on how the Roma (a small segment of the Roma population that is) were beginning to push back. A few violent attempts as gaining the high ground have led to violence in return. And now it is the ethnic Czechs turn at dishing out more violence of its own.
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Recently four Czech men severely beat a Rom with baseball bats in an apparent retaliatory attack for the Romani youth who had attacked four Czechs. An eye for an eye is clearly the rule of Northern Bohemia these days. And the battle field is ripe with those willing to dish out its brutal law.
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Police have shown that they are either unwilling or incapable of stopping the violence. Riot police have been used only after the violence has begun. Parades by the neo-Nazis have been allowed to occur even when violent hate speech had preceded these displays of force. Mobs readily allowed to form while the authorities stood uninterested on the sidelines.
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In the town of Rumburk, Czech Republic, 1,500 ethnic Czechs took to the streets to "protest" the Roma population. Their bigoted message was amplified by the Czech Social Democrat Party who sponsored their "right" to such a hate filled cause. These fascist leaning citizens quickly turned from an organized rally to a flash mob of sorts.
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Seventeen minutes after the rally had begun a local citizen took the microphone and called upon his fellow mob members to take to the streets with pickaxes and pitchforks. The politicians claim this is when they called the "rally" off. But the actions they had set into motion would not stop just because the politicians wanted them to. This was now an officially sanctioned mob. This was an army raised by the Czech Social Democrat Party.
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Not waiting to gather the weapons of they had been called to use, the army of thugs and Nazis stormed the "Rumburk Triangle". This was a name given to a pair of apartment buildings occupied mainly by Roma families. It was there that the violence began. It was there that the far-right of the Czech Republic launched stones, rocks, and tree limbs into the homes of Roma families.
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The petrol bombs that the Czech Nazi movement had promised did not arrive, thankfully. However the screaming and beating on the doors lasted some time before the Czechs left. Their voice had been made known. Their threats had been heard. And now it was time for them to move on to their next target.
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Moving on to a single level home, occupied by one Roma family, the ethnic Czechs began to attack the home in any way they could. The first of the mob to reach the home began the attack by breaking out windows. For the rest of the attack the mob continued to threaten to "burn the Gypsies alive". Once again, thankfully the Nazi made petrol bombs never materialized.
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This is when the Czech police say that they began to "monitor" the attacks from a helicopter overhead. They also claim that the only reason the police did not stop the mob was because the presence of young children. In our opinion this excuse is an excellent reason to stop the attacks.
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Waiting for the mob at the next target, riot police stood aside as the attackers targeted another apartment building. It was there that the mob broke down a fence to get at the Roma families. And it was by this time that the mob showed real intent to cause actual harm. The rabid mode of the mob was in full swing.
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Breaking in windows, a few mob members began to show interest in getting in and personally attacking the Roma within. Finally the riot police began to step in. But the damage was done. The homes had been vandalized. The rule of law had shown its weakness... its lean toward the right.
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We know that if history is not learned from it than we are damned to repeat it. We know that the Czech Republic has shown in the past that it is willing to allow hate crimes to occur against Romani citizens. We have seen houses burned out and Roma shot in the back as they fled the attacks. These mobs are just another step toward the end goal of the Nazi movement... extermination.
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Will we be seeing this in the coming weeks? Another form of genocide... the pogroms of old Russia? Is the Czech Republic's ethnic tension just a stepping stone toward another pharrajimos (devouring)?
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Time will tell. But until we know for sure we can only scream so that the world might listen. We must call for an end to this that doesn't involve the deaths of even a few Roma, let alone hundreds, thousands, or millions.
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Source Documents, Note that not all sources are listed.
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Romea.cz
http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2744
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2761
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2734
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2755
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2762
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http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_2745
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