Inefficient British Asylum Procedures
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 | |  | Published by roblov on 20.10.2006 at 17:52. |
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Due to inefficient asylum procedures (applicants for asylum in Britain often wait for final decision for up to four years) Britain was becoming increasingly worried by the relatively small, but unceasing influx of Romany applicants for asylum in Britain. Rather than properly reforming its own, British asylum system (Oxford University specialist in immigration law Guy S. Goodwin-Gill argues that British immigration procedures are arbitrary and unaccountable and demands that a professional, independent agency, fully separate from the Home Office, be set up for the processing of asylum applications) Britain issued a threat the Czech Republic that unless it unprecedentedly allowed British immigration officers to prevent Romanies from travelling to Britain before their board their plane at Prague Airport, it would impose visas on all Czech citizens, just like it had done in the case of Slovakia, where anyone who wishes to travel to Britain must first personally report to the British Embassy in Bratislava to the appropriate racial officer who personaly examines check the colour of their skin before deciding whether or not to allow them to travel to the UK
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The Best Material For Years, But...
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| | | Published by defenderBG on 20.10.2006 at 12:15. |
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Under normal circumstances, the news items on Czech TV are very short, the pace of the news is hectic. The impact of this newsitem was made much stronger than usual by the fact that it was not too rushed and the item was much longer than is usually the case.
However, it must be added that when the whole half-hour programme Fakta, featuring this problem, was eventually broadcast on Monday 30th July, it became apparent that the Czech TV had prepared its racial test incompetently and the detailed analysis of the work of the immigration officials in the half hour broadcast within Fakta was incompetenet and inconclusive. The problem was that the white reporter behaved like an educated, middle class person while the Romany reporter answered questions in a quite unconvincing, illiterate manner. The white reporter could speak English, the Romany reporter could not. If the Fakta programme proved anything it proved that the British immigration officers discriminated against Samko primarily on the basis of class, maybe less on the basis of colour. In spite of that, the first impression, made on the Main Evening News on Wednesday 25th July was incredibly strong and had a lasting impact.
The British must have known that they had lost the propaganda war by then. Ambassador Broucher tried to defend his immigration officials by saying that Samko had allegedly given a fictitious London adresss. Czech TV responded by showing the appropriate page from a London A-Z where the street that Samko gave was listed - it was the same address which was visited by the white reporter Nora Nováková. So Broucher retorted that the name of the street had been garbled and that Samko had not given a proper post code. One commentator replied that Samko was not dutibound to give a postcode since he was not a parcel. The debate was beginning to assume absurd features.
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The Czech Media Behaved Sensibly
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| | | Published by atrus123 on 20.10.2006 at 16:39. |
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It was remarkable in the whole controversy that while the British diplomats and most Czech politicians were making ever more absurd statements, the media, especially the newspapers, unusually, behaved very sensibly. One wonders why this was. Was it because the Czech, predominantly right wing media hate the social democratic Foreign Minister Jan Kavan and his British cronies Jack Straw and other members of the Blair government and were deliberately trying to make life as difficult as possible?
It is indisputable that the situation was outrageous and absurd and that most Czech newspapers displayed good common sense. This was all the more remarkable since the Czech intellectual community, who had been up in arms in December 2000, allegedly in support for freedom of speech when there was a threat that a new Chief Executive of Czech TV, a BBC man, might open the finances of Czech public service TV to public scrutiny and much of the money and publicity which flows to these "intellectuals" from Czech TV would have probably been curtailed, did not react at all when the human rights of their Romani fellow citizens were being infringed.
Václav Havel, on holiday in Portugal, eventually got round to criticising the ethnic filter at Prague Airport only after Jaroslav Plesl, one of the best and the most courageous young Czech journalists published the following article in the Prague "intellectual daily" Lidové noviny (it is quite paradoxical that ITN only ran an item about the matter when Havel reluctantly decided to criticise the British):
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What It Looked Like On The Ground
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| | | Published by Connie Batten on 20.10.2006 at 13:55. |
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Romany and human rights organisations, especially the Czech Helsinki Committee and the Amnesty International in London have strongly criticised the British measures at Prague Airport as racist, Prague and London governments rejected this criticism. The Czech Helsinki Committee wished to have its representatives at Ruzyně Airport present during the interviews with British immigration officials, but to begin with, the British were refusing this and eventually they allowed the representatives of the Helsinki Committee to be present for one day only. The Czech Helsinki Committee repeatedly protested against the British ethnic filter at Prague Airport.
You may think that I am exaggerating, but the parallels with the racial exclusion, as practiced by the Nazis in Central Europe, were clear in Prague this summer, uncomfortable and a little too close for comfort. The Czech authorities acquiesced in the British outrage "for the good of the majority society", closing their eyes to a discrimination of a minority. Both the Foreign Ministr Jan Kavan and his Deputy Foreign Minister Martin Palouš defended the racist exclusions on TV and said that the aim was to prevent visa being imposed from Britain on all Czechs, which would be "much worse". Palouš said that the Romanies could always apply for asylum at the British Embassy in Prague - that was later denied by the Embassy spokesman. It is perhaps absurd that while making public statements supporting the British racist filter, Jan Kavan sent a confidential message to Britské listy, saying that he fully supports our criticism of this measure. It was probably on his part a feeble attempt at media manipulation - he tried to persuade us by informal channels not to criticise him.
PRAGUE, July 18 (AFP) - British immigration officers blocked a number of
gypsy families from boarding London-bound flights in Prague Wednesday in a
move to clamp down on bogus ayslum-seekers before they even reach Britain.
The Roma families were declared "undesirable" at Prague airport by officers
on the first day of an initiative to cut the number of people arriving in
Britain with no right to stay.
Gypsies live in extreme poverty and mostly outside of normal social
infrastructures in the Czech Republic and other countries in the region
including Slovakia, where they face widespread discrimination.
Czech citizens have never required a visa to travel to Britain, although
London has warned it could review the situation in recent years.
Airlines face fines of 2,000 pounds if they decide to take a passenger
deemed undesirable by the British officials, said spokesman Dan Plovajko.
The new measures involve 10 flights daily, eight from Prague to London and
one each to Manchester and Birmingham. The British officers were checking
passengers before they checked in their luggage for the flight to Britain.
The date of the start of the initiative was kept secret until the last
minute, by agreement between the two countries.
The British spokeswoman said 1,230 people arriving from the Czech Republic
had claimed asylum in Britain last year, and 515 applications had been
received by the end of May this year. The number of successful applications
was "very small," she added.
A twenty-two year old skinhead stabbed to death a thirty-year-old Romany at a disco at Svitavy in the night from Friday 20th July to Saturday 21st July. The police has charged the man with a racially motivated murder. The accused openly supports the skinhead movement.
"The skinhead first verbally assaulted the Romany man using racist abuse and then he repeatedly stabbed him in the stomach. The Romany man suffered serious injuries of which he subsequently died. The attacker has been charged and detained, said Iva Markova, the press spokesperson for the East Bohemian Police. If he is found guilty, he can be sentenced to up to 15 years imprisonment, or can be given an "exceptional punishment".
As the police has said, the skinhead had been sentenced before for racially motivated violence. Four years ago, he stabbed a Romany man in a Svitavy street, without any provocation or motivation. "Although the court found him guilty of violent assault, it gave him then only a suspended sentence," said the Deputy Director of Svitavy police Tomas Fadrny. He added that two years ago the skinhead got in conflict with the law as a result of his fight with an anarchist, and that he had committed a similar offence in 1996.
According to our reporters, the twenty two year old skinhead started insulting a group of Romany customers at a disco, hurling racist abuse at them. Without warning he stabbed one of the Romany men several times and the man succumbed to the injuries. The murdered man leaves behind a wife who is seriously ill and two small children.
4. According to an opinion poll, 57 Czechs feel there is nothing wrong with the action of the British at Prague airport and moree than 70 percent Czechs feel the action of the British is not racist. The main concern of the majority Czech population is the fear that the British might reintroduce visa.
5. British Ambassador to the Czech Republic David Broucher lied on Czech TV tonight that "no Czech citizen can apply for asylum in Britain" (How come that several Romanies, i.e. Czech citizens, have been granted asylum in Britain on appeal?)
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Ask Aristotle
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| | | Published by gioi on 20.10.2006 at 22:25. |
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The weapons inspector, who is believed to have committed suicide after being named as the source of a highly controversial BBC story, made the prophetic comment months before the storm over his conversation with the reporter Andrew Gilligan broke.
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The Romany Problem
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| | | Published by boblu on 20.10.2006 at 23:56. |
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As is well known, the Central and East European Romanies are in trouble. They have always lived under pressure in the Central and East Europe because their nomadic way of life was incompatible with the conditions of Europen living. Large numbers of Romanies were murdered by the Nazis - this is a trauma from which the Romany population has never recovered. The communist regimes of the second half of the 20th century tried forcibly to assimilate Romanies by various more or less brutal ways, including forced sterilisation of Romany women. Primarily in response to the assimilation pressure with which it could not cope the nomadic way of life of the Romanies has been destroyed and has often been replaced by antisocial, parasitical, pathological and rebellious behaviour towards the majority society. At the same time, it has to be said that even those Romanies who have conformed to the pressures of modern society, acquired education and live like normal citizens are exposed to quite unacceptable levels of racism and violence in the Central and East European societies.
The plight of the Central and East European Romanies has worsened since the fall of communism. Most Romanies have lost their jobs and have become subject to sustained racist abuse. The Czechs usually say "I am not a racist, but..." and then there follows a long litany of racist prejudice. The relations between the Romanies and the white Czechs are quite tense.
In a primitive way, the Czech tabloid Nova Television attempted to react to the rising Czech-Romany tension. in 1997, it broadcast a shoddily researched, highly idealised report on the happy life of Romanies who had emigrated from the Czech Republic to Canada and then to Britain was broadcast. This created a long term wave of Romany immigration first to Canada and then to the United Kingdom.
It is very difficult to say to what extent the Romany applications for asylum on the basis of persecution are justified. It is well documented that Romanies are exposed to sustained, sometimes even institutionalised racism in Central Europe in general and in the Czech Republic in particular. In fact most Romanies admit that they come to Britain and other West European countries exactly because although they become victims of racist attacks by right wing extremists in Britain just as in Central Europe, western societies generally are more open-minded and tolerant towards them than is the case in Central Europe. There have been well documented cases of physical terror attacks against a number of Romanies in their native countries.
Canada has granted political asylum to approximately 1000 Czech Romanies. Great Britain has assumed a much stricter attitude and has tried to deny political asylum to most of them. Nevertheless, between 8 and 20 per cent of Romany applicants for asylum have been granted asylum in the UK on appeal.
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