Richard M. Clewett, Jr
Eastern Kentucky University
Engclewt@acs.eku.edu
Presented at the Duke Conference on Transnational Organizations,
April 9th, 1999
(Draft version.
Do not cite without permission)
During the last several decades an increasingly stringent and
attention-demanding web of
human rights regimes has come into being as the result of the creation
of a number of
transnational bodies to which states, particularly in Europe, have
ceded parts of their autonomy.
As the countries of Central Europe attempt to integrate themselves
again into Europe and gain
entrance to such organization as the Council of Europe and the European
Union, they have been
expected to take on the full weight of these detailed human rights
regimes and to conform the
laws and behaviors of their governments and citizens to them.
They have had to take on this
obligation at the same time they are converting their economic and
political systems in order to
meet the standards of these same organizations, particularly the European
Union (Preston 113).
The pressures of this situation are hurting as well as helping the
Roma (gypsies, tsganie). At the
same time, the treatment of the Roma is increasingly becoming
a litmus test for governments in
Central Europe, both in terms of human rights per se and, in a more
complicated way, in the
process of proving to such transnational bodies as the Council of Europe
and the European Union
that they are functioning democracies (Leff 246-247). In this
paper, I will describe briefly the
increasingly exigent web of transnational human rights regimes currently
in play in Central Europe
and compare the efforts of the Czech and Hungarian governments to improve
the often deplorable
conditions in which Roma in their countries live. I will also
examine briefly factors that are
leading to a general worsening of economic, political, and human rights
conditions in these
countries despite the efforts of their central governments and the
increasing emphasis on human
rights standards and enforcement mechanisms.
The Increasing Articulation and Clout of International Human Rights
Regimes
When the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights
was adopted in 1948, it
was essentially a set of aspirations without binding legal force.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the
United Nations member countries formulated and ratified the International
Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social,
and Cultural Rights. “The
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requires states
to ensure rights to life, due
process of law, freedom of expression and religion, freedom to travel,
cultural rights of minorities,
participation in government, equality and protection from discrimination,
and the right to marry
and have a family” (Jacobson 78). In 1965, the United nations
also adopted the International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
After World War II, the Council of Europe was established to
promote human rights
within Europe. Its European Convention on Human Rights was based
upon the UN’s Declaration
and intended to help give it teeth. The Council of Europe established
an international court, the
European Court of Human Rights, to which human rights cases involving
member countries can
be brought. Both the Court and the Convention are intended
to advance international human
rights in Europe. Anyone can make claims under the convention.
The judges of the Court of
Human Rights do not have to be members of any contracting state.
The Convention has become
“the nucleus of a European constitution and a European Bill of Rights”
(80-81).
The third major interlocking institution that promotes and legislates
on human rights in
Europe is the Organization (formerly the Council) of Security and Cooperation
in Europe. The
CSCE was originally established in 1975 by the Helsinki Final
Act as an instrument of cold war
diplomacy. In 1990 it redirected its efforts to function as “an
intergovernmental institution for the
promotion of human rights” ( Jacobson 79). Its 1990 Charter of
Paris for a New Europe
explicitly acknowledges the right to choose and belong to an ethnic
or national minority. The
Document of the Copenhagen Meeting of the Conference on the Human dimension
of the CSCE
(1990) states:
To belong to
a national minority is a matter of a person’s individual choice and no
disadvantage may arise from the exercise of
such choice. Persons belonging to
national minorities have the right freely
to express, preserve and develop their
ethnic, cultural, linguistic or religious
identity and develop their culture in all its
aspects, free from any attempts at assimilation
against their will. (Struggle 129)
Within this context of overlapping human rights regimens, various
organizations have
recognized the unusual circumstances and needs of the Roma in the context
of combating
discrimination and “racial and ethnic hatred.” Isabel Fonseca
summarizes this chain of events as
follows:
At Copenhagen
(and later, in more and more clauses and articles, at Moscow,
Oslo, Geneva, and Helsinki), the fifty-two
nation members of the Conference on
Security and Cooperation in Europe .
. . "recognized the particular problems of
the Roma" in Europe, in the context of intolerance,
anti-Semitism, and xenophobia
in general. The UN Commission on Human
Rights followed with a controversial
recognition of the Roma minority--controversial
because not all its members
recognized Gypsies as a people. In the
form of the International Romani Union,
the Gypsies had already (in 1979) been recognized
by the Economic and Social
Council of the United Nations, but it was
only in 1993, following strenuous
lobbying by Gheorghe and Ian Hancock, that
this recognition was raised from
symbolic "consultative" status to a vote.
(Fonseca 202)
Under the aegis of the OSCE, the Central European countries also signed,
in 1994, the Central
European Initiative, which included a detailed document “for the protection
of minority rights”
(CEI Instrument).
This stream of agreements led to the creation of several organizations
especially
concerned with the human rights of the Roma: the Contact Point for
Roma and Sinti Issues in the
OSCE, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR)
in Warsaw, and the
Council of Europe Special Group for Roma/Gypsies (Muller). It
has also led to a substantial flow
of human rights monitoring reports concerning the Roma in Central Europe.
These include the
U.S. State Department country reports, the Council of Europe’s European
Commission against
Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) country reports, the United Nation’s
Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) country reports,
the country reports of
the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Amnesty International, and ad hoc
reports such as the 1996
CSCE report on “Ex Post Facto Problems of the Czech Citizenship Law
(“Ex Post”).
Treatment of the Roma Historically and Especially in the Late
Soviet Period
Why have these various international bodies thought that the
human rights of Roma
required special attention? The answer lies in their long history
as victims of all but universal
discrimination, including enslavement in Romania and adjacent regions
and genocide at the hands
of Hitler’s Nazi regime. Historically, the Roma have been subjected
to one of two paradigmatic
fates: either legislation was passed to prevent them from settling
or even setting foot in a region,
or else legislation was passed to force them to settle either as slaves
or as assimilated members of
the mainstream community (Crowe, passim). In Soviet Hungary and
Czechoslovakia, both of
these policies had some sway.
Like all the other Central European countries, Hungary and the
Czech Republic have both
been plagued by two legacies of the Soviet period that had been particularly
important to the fate
of the Roma. One is what has been called the “post-communist
syndrome” and the other is a
particularly strong emphasis on national and ethnic identities that
resulted in part from the needs
and policies of the Soviet regime. To deal with this second issue
first, it is true, of course that
there has been an all but world-wide increase in the extent to which
people and groups have come
to think of themselves in ethnic and national terms. This trend
has been dealt with extensively in
the literature of globalization as a kind of reaction to the increasingly
strong economic forces of
global capitalism that are perceived by many people as threatening
their ways of life as well as
their livelihood itself (Castells).
Unlike elsewhere, however, in communist Russia and Central Europe,
ethnic nationalism
was the only ideology, other than Marxism itself, that was tolerated
and sometimes even
encouraged by Soviet authorities. According to Ronald Suny, “the
Soviet state’s deeply
contradictory policy nourished the cultural uniqueness of distinct
peoples. It thereby increased
ethnic solidarity and national consciousness in the non-Russian republics,
even as it frustrated full
articulation of a national agenda by requiring conformity to an imposed
political order” (quoted in
Castells 38-9). Thus, Castells argues that during the final stages
of the breakup of the Soviet
empire “[n]ationalism, including Russian nationalism, provided the
ideological basis for social
mobilization in a society where strict political ideologies,
not relying on historical-cultural
identity, suffered the backlash of cynicism and disbelief generated
by seven decades of
indoctrination in the themes of communist utopia” (38).
This dynamic applied not only within the Soviet Union but also
in the former satellite
countries of Central Europe. The communist governments in these
countries followed the
example of Moscow in recognizing official ethnic or national minorities,
whose cultures, then,
were protected and promoted, as long as such activities did not interfere
with the primacy of
communist ideology or Moscow’s centralized control. During most
of the period between the
end of World War II and the demise of the Soviet empire, the communist
governments of
Hungary and Czechoslovakia refused to grant the Roma official recognition
as a minority
nationality, characterizing the Roma, rather, as a deviant social group
that needed to be re-formed
and assimilated. This prevailing policy coexisted with periodic
and some more or less sustained,
though sometimes half-hearted, attempts to combat anti-Roma prejudice
and discrimination
practiced against the Roma by members of majority ethnic groups.
The second legacy of the communist period relevant here, the
“post-communist
syndrome,” has already been alluded to in Castells’s remarks about
the “backlash of cynicism and
disbelief” generated by the long decades of communist rule:
This malady
stems in part from the Communists’ destruction of moral standards.
While claiming to be the vanguard of a new
man in a new society, the Communists
revealed themselves to be ruthless, selfish,
opportunistic, brutal, cruel, deceitful.
The gap between the Communist promise and
the reality of life under
totalitarianism created cynical, bitter and
resentful people (Editorial preface to Ulc
27).
The result of these two legacies from the Soviet period is a
strain of rabid and unashamed
racism. Thus, Ulc says:
As in other
post-Communist countries, being labeled a racist is no cause for any
particular embarrassment. It is boasted
about with patriotic pride among some
Czechs, notably among the poorly educated
manual laborers with shaved heads
and fierce expressions–the skinheads loosely
organized in subgroups known as
Rdshini, Sharpskini, Naziskini, or Knights
of Ku-Klux-Klan. These groups are
openly anti-Semitic and express nostalgia
for the Nazi era and its methods. (Ulc
29)
To this skinhead violence must be added a layer of rural, peasant ethnic
violence that has also
been on the increase throughout the region.
Comparative Sketch of the Efforts Made by the Czech and Hungarian
Governments During the Past Decade to Deal with the Claims
and Needs of the Roma
In a July 1998 CSCE hearing on human rights problems of the Roma
in Central Europe,
David Crowe and the other experts agreed, that while all of the countries
in the region had their
pluses and minuses, Hungary ranked in the top echelon of Central European
countries in terms of
the attempts of its government to promote the human rights of the Roma,
while the Czech
Republic ranked near the bottom (Romani 22). This contrast may
seem all the more surprising
given the general esteem in which the Czech Republic is held as one
of the countries in the region
most likely to succeed in converting itself into a western style democracy
complete with privatized
capitalistic economy and, further because of the stature of its president
Vaclav Havel, as a
spokesperson for decency, democracy, European values, and, specifically
human rights. Roma
are highly unpopular in both countries, and it is implausible to try
to explain the better track
record of the Hungarian government with respect to the Roma on the
basis of difference in level
of popular prejudice. Rather, the differences in the human rights
records of the Czech and
Hungarian governments with respect to the Roma can be explained by
the convergence of a
number of factors. These include (1) the history of the governmental
transition from communism
in each country, (2) the historical distribution of the Roma within
the boundaries of each country,
(3) the number and relative importance of minority ethnic populations
within the country, and,
finally, (4) the number of Czechs and Hungarians in neighboring countries.
Continuity with the Communist era among the political actors
during the formation of the
post-communist Hungarian constitution and government led to a relatively
coherent, thoughtful,
and sustained governmental policy toward the Roma in Hungary.
By contrast, in the Czech
Republic, where the Communists were excluded from participation, frequent
changes of
government have led to great vacillation in governmental policy and
structure.
The relatively enlightened quality of the Hungarian government’s
Roma policies is also
partially the result of the fact that a somewhat higher percentage
of the Hungarian population
consists of members of non-Magyar minority nationalities than is true
of non-Czech groups in the
Czech Republic. In Hungary there are thirteen recognized minority
nationalities and they
constitute just more than 10% of the population (Hungary).
By contrast, there are six minority
groups in the Czech Republic and they constitute a mere 5.6% of the
population (Czech
Republic). Moreover, the Hungarian government is much more worried
about the human rights
of minority groups in the abstract because of its concern about Hungarian
(Magyar) minority
populations in a number of neighboring countries. By taking
the high ground and setting an
example through its own laws concerning ethnic minorities, the Hungarian
government seeks to
gain leverage in the international community and with neighboring governments
to ensure that
ethnic Magyars within their borders will be treated well. The
Czech government has no parallel
source of concern (Leff 248). Thus, the Czech Republic
is in greater danger of conceiving itself
as an ethnic state; its twentieth century history also clearly inclines
it in this direction, arguably,
but not clearly, more so than is the case in Hungary. Thus, the
"Government Programme for a
Civic Hungary" claims that cultural diversity is part of the Hungarian
tradition, while Sayer has
demonstrated how the ideology of the Czech state came to focus during
the later part of the
nineteenth century on Czech ethnic nationalism, to the exclusion of
German and other minorities.
The follow passage from the Programme suggests the present government
stance, and the "usable
past" it is trying to create:
Cultural diversity
has been typical of Hungary for centuries. There is hardly a
family in Hungary where there are not 3-4
different nationalities among the
ancestors. This is one of Hungary's
advantages reaching back to the centauries,
which we should consciously care for not only
because we are obliged to do so in
international treaties but also because it
is a long term national interest. (43)
Two developments symbolically capture the difference in governmental
policy toward the
Roma in Hungary and the Czech Republic during the past decade.
They are, on the one hand, the
system of minority self-governments established in Hungary and, on
the other, the anti-Roma
provisions of the citizenship law instituted in 1993 by the Czech government
after the “Velvet
Divorce,” as the separation of the former Czechoslovakia into the Czech
and Slovak successor
states is sometimes called.
The Czech Citizenship Law
The expulsion of the Sudeten Germans from western Czechoslovakia
after World War II
reduced what had been a sizable and once influential German population
to a mere remnant.
After the Velvet Divorce, this left the new Czech Republic as very
heavily Czech-dominated
entity. During the years preceding the end of communist rule,
the Czechoslovakian government
had adopted a policy of forced resettlement of Roma intended to break
up their concentration in
parts of Slovakia and distribute them throughout the country.
The policy was also intended to
force them to assimilate as part of the industrial population.
This provoked a great deal of
resentment among the general population and frequent non-compliance
among local government
functionaries, since localities were required to provide housing, which
was scarce, and jobs for he
relocated Roma (Crowe 57). The result was that some local governments
refused to register the
relocated Roma, leaving them without residence permits, and, thus,
outside the law.
In 1993, when Czechoslovakia divided into two countries, the
government of the new
Czech Republic passed a citizenship law that seemed intended to force
many of the Roma
currently living in the Czech Republic to move to Slovakia. While
President Havel’s speeches
sounded a very different note, the actions of the Czech legislators
who drafted the new citizenship
law proclaimed, in effect, that Roma were not welcome in the
Czech Republic and that the Czech
state was to be a nationalist rather than an inclusive, civic entity.
In the words of the U.S. State
Department’s country report on the Czech Republic for 1998, “[w]ithout
Czech citizenship under
the law, many Roma who are long-term residents or were born in the
Czech Republic have no
right to work, vote, or receive health insurance and other social benefits.”
In the face of repeated
protest and criticism from human rights NGOs, the UNHCR and the council
of Europe, the
citizenship law was amended in 1996 “to waive the requirement for a
clean criminal record,” but
thousands of Roma living in the Czech Republic are still in legal limbo
as a result of the 1993 law
(State Department Report of Czech Republic; Ex Post).
While many other factors were clearly involved, the signal sent
to Czech society by the
Citizenship law may have contributed to what a March 1998 CERD
report claimed to be a sixfold
increase in hate crimes committed in the Czech Republic between 1994
and 1996 (European
Roma). The Czech Helsinki Committee’s extensive Report on the
State of Human Rights in the
Czech Republic in 1997 concluded:
But what seems
unbelievable is the reluctance with which the Czech government
and all other state bodies approach their
international agreements. What is
shocking is not so much the discrepancies
between the demanded norms and
reality, but the lack of interest of the Czech
government to efficiently deal with
these problems.
The Hungarian System
of Minority Self-Government
Shortly after the end of the communist era the new Hungarian
legislature started working
on the legislation to create what has become an elaborate system of
legislative and administrative
bodies designed to give the thirteen official minority nationalities
some measure of collective
control over the factors affecting their lives. These efforts
culminated in the Law on Minorities
(Act XXVII of 1993). The minority self-governments are supposed
to help the national
minorities protect their rights and interests and preserve and nurture
their traditional languages
and cultures. It is an elaborate system, involving two new kinds
of local institutions, Minority
Local Governments and Local Minority Self-Governments, and a National
Minority Self-
Government for each minority. These bodies are not intended to
provide large-scale autonomy
for the different ethnic groups, but “to enhance the ability of the
minorities to discuss and
articulate their interests” (Kovats 47). Thus,
In matters affecting
members of the minority, the self-government is entitled to
make representations to the relevant administrative
authorities and their officials in
order to (1) request information, (2) make
recommendations, (3) express
disapproval of actions taken which infringe
the rights of the minority, and (4)
initiate procedures for the review or reversal
of a decision . . .
The Minorities
Law also gives local self-governments the power to veto
decisions of the local authority which affect
the minority in the areas of culture,
education, the local media, and the public
use of their mother tongue. (47)
To supplement and help enforce this system of minority self-governments,
the Hungarian
legislature established in June 1995 a Parliamentary Commissioner for
Minority Affairs who acts
as an ombudsman, and there is also a Secretary of State for Minority
Affairs (50). This system
has taken most of the past decade to be put into effect. On the
basis of these efforts, the
Hungarian government claims to be at the forefront of European efforts
to deals with minority
problems.
Nonetheless, the Hungarian system of minority self-government
and related legislation
looks better on paper than in practice, at least when it comes to the
experiences of the Roma.
Traditional attitudes of ethnic animosity, compounded by major economic
and social dislocation,
clearly place huge obstacles in the way of government policies designed
to combat racism and
human rights violations.
One of the main problems with the Hungarian system of self government
is the fact that
anyone can vote for representatives to minority self-governments.
“It has been estimated that
fewer than ten percent of those who voted for Roma self-governments
were Roma themselves”
(Kovats 52). This results from the fact that ballots including
candidates for minority self-
governments are distributed to all voters, since it is against the
law to keep records of nationality
or ethnicity. Thus, anyone who wishes can claim to belong to
a minority nationality, even if only
for the purpose of influencing an election (Burger). Other problems
include the fact that
"underfunding and lack of cooperation from local and national governments
gives the minority
governments few opportunities to improve the lot of people."
Indeed, according to an official
report, Roma self-governments don't have sufficient means to accomplish
their uniquely
complicated tasks. “Whereas the self-governments of the national minorities
are active mainly in
the areas of education, culture, and preserving traditions, the Gypsy
self-governments have the
additional tasks which relate to social, health and employment questions"
(Report no. J/3670).
All this has led Alison Lys, of the British government’s Know How Fund,
to conclude: “In theory
the act is wonderful, but in practice it produces an instant ghetto
system" (Sobotkova). On the
basis of his dissertation research, Martin Kovats has concluded that
one of the main motives of
the Hungarian government in developing its system of minority self-governments
was to create a
structure in which it would seem internationally acceptable to also
promote Magyar
nationalism–i.e, the ethnic identity of the majority (Kovats, Personal).
Nonetheless, Hungary
clearly has better Human and Minority Rights laws in place than does
the Czech Republic, and the
central government in Budapest has made a greater attempt to see that
its laws are enforced than
has the government in Prague.
NGOs, Transnational Governing Bodies, International Funding,
and the Roma of Central Europe
As has already been suggested, Hungary, the Czech Republic and
other Central European
countries are trying, for practical reasons, at least, to give the
appearance of satisfying the
transnational human rights regimes. They have been aided and
pressured in this effort by NGOs
working often in collaboration with the Council of Europe, the OSCE,
and the EU. The nature
and scope of this collaboration can be illustrated by means of brief
descriptions of four specific
NGOs: the Project for Ethnic Relations (PER), the European Roma Right
Center (ERRC), the
Roma Participation Project, and the Czech Helsinki Committee.
The Project on Ethnic Relations is headquartered in Princeton,
New Jersey and is
principally funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, with additional
funding from the
Starr Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Philip D. Reed
Foundation. It was founded
in 1991
in anticipation
of the serious interethnic conflicts that were to erupt following the
collapse of Communism in Central and Eastern
Europe and the former Soviet
Union. PER conducts programs of high-level
intervention and dialogue and serves
as a neutral mediator in several major disputes
in the region. PER also conducts
programs of training, education, and research
at international, national, and
community levels.
It has concerned itself especially with the fate of the Roma in Central
Europe, staging a number of
conferences with various governments and groups in the region.
PER is involved in a number of
ongoing projects involving the education of Romani leaders and has
staged conferences designed
to improve coverage of the Roma in the press (Project on Ethnic Relations).
The Czech Helsinki Committee is a country-based human rights
monitoring group. It
does extensive research on human rights in the Czech Republic and publishes
a thorough report.
The committee receives major funding from the Ford Foundation, the
UNHCR, which supports
its counseling Centre for Refugees and its Citizenship Counseling Centre,
and the Phare/Tacis
Democracy Programme of the European Union.
Three other NGOs may be mentioned to complete this illustration
of the range of
internationally funded bodies that deal in different ways with the
human rights of the Roma in
Central Europe. One is the Helsinki Citizens Assembly, which
produced six very informative
newsletters and sponsored three Roma-relation conferences in the 1996-1998
period. It seems to
be defunct now, perhaps a casualty of the temporary shutdown of the
Phare/Tacis program, at
that time the “largest funder of Czech NGOs, because of an interruption
in funding from the EU
(Horak).
The European Roma Rights Center is a public interest law
center specializing in the
Roma. It is headquartered in Budapest and includes as major sponsors
the Soros Open Society
Institute, the PHARE Democracy Programme of the European Union, which
is intended to help
Central European countries meet the requirements for admission into
the EU; the Ford
Foundation; Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the United States Information
Service.
The ERRC acts to combat racism and discrimination against Roma.
It also helps Roma learn
how to defend their own rights by engaging in a wide number of activities.
These include
monitoring, issuing reports, supporting legal services, giving grants
to other organizations that
promote its goals, legal research, and offering legal scholarships
to Roma. ERRC takes Roma
human rights cases before the European Court of Human Rights of the
Council of Europe, and
has been developing creative litigation strategies in such transnaitonal
bodies to gain maximal
leverage in countries what “domestic courts still show that they do
not understand and are not
interested in the international human rights standards” (Plese).
Another kind of NGO funded in a sense by outside money and pursuing
goals
complementary to those of the ERRC is Soros’ Open Society Program’s
Roma Participation
Program (RPP), which was begun in 1997 to help
Roma help themselves
in the struggle for greater integration into the societies of
the countries in which they live. The program
aims to open the way for Roma to
lead peaceful lives amidst the general population,
and at the same time retain their
cultural identity; to empower them to take
part in the democratic process and to
fight for an open society in which they can
take part as equal partners. (About)
The RPP is very much an advocacy and self-help organization.
It was created by the parent
foundation in part to overcome the inertia of the foundation’s country-based
Open Society
organizations. As a group, the Soros-sponsored organizations
constitute an impressive force
concerned with promoting human rights and democracy in Eastern Europe.
But such
organizations also provoke backlash reactions among conservative Hungarian
political parties, as
has the Soros-funded European University in Budapest.
Recent Developments in Hungary and the
Czech Republic
Despite the work of all these complexly inter-related NGOs, transnational
governing
bodies, and individual Czech and Hungarian officials and citizens,
it has been argued that the
social and human rights conditions of the Roma throughout Central Europe
have declined in
recent years:
Roma have gained
legal acceptance as a minority and are now allowed to organize
themselves both politically and culturally.
In most of the above-mentioned
countries Roma are now represented in legislative
bodies or at least in advising
councils. Programs for the improvement
of their social and economic situation
have also been developed. But neither
their theoretical legal equality nor the
supporting programs have any recent influence
on the real situation. Most of the
supporting programs help more to calm the
conscience of the initiators than attack
the basis for the exclusion of Roma from society.
(Muller)
In the Czech Republic there has been a flurry of activity concerning
the Roma as a result
of the negative press the Czechs have received stinging criticism because
of the flight of Roma to
England and Canada and the Canadian government’s granting exile status
to some of these
refugees. The Czechs have also received stringing criticism in
human rights monitoring reports.
In 1997 (Government Report Aims) and again recently there was a reorganization
of the
governmental structures for dealing with Roma affairs (Racially motivated).
Last August, the
new Prime Minister floated the not very practical idea of outlawing
the skinhead movement
(Greene). The last years of Vaclav Claus’ Prime Ministership
saw a series of laws proposed to
limit the entrance of foreigners and foreign business into the republic
(Larsen; Boermans). Some
of these proposals seemed to conflict with EU human rights standards
(Farnam). Once again in
his New Year’s speech on January first, 1999, President Havel make
an impassioned plea against
the tendency of Czechs to put up walls between themselves and Roma
and others they view as
foreigners (Havel).
In both Hungary and the Czech Republic some efforts have been
made to address the
extraordinary educational needs of Romani children resulting from the
illiteracy of many of their
parents, the fact that they sometimes encounter a second language at
school, and the general
distrust of and even antagonism among Roma towards schooling (Roma/Gypsy).
These efforts
must be seen, however, against widespread segregation of Roma in special
classes and in special
schools for the mentally retarded. Similarly, some efforts have
recently been made in both
countries to improve the coverage of Romani affairs in the mainstream
press and to train Roma
journalists (Burger, Gypsy Reporters), but these efforts must be seen
against pervasively negative
and prejudiced reporting in the press, particularly outside of the
capital cities. Hungarian courts
have recently made some precedent-setting decisions in favor of Roma
rights, including a 1998
case of segregated schooling (Hungarian court). In October of
1998, the Hungarian Minister of
Justice set about preparing plans to counter workplace discrimination
(Hungarian Ministry).
In both Hungary and the Czech Republic one can find restaurants
that will not serve
Roma. Even since the last decades of the communist era, the Roma
of both countries have been
targets of animosity from portions of the majority population that
felt they were getting special
treatment. Today this is an especially sensitive issue.
More generally, it seems as if human rights
advocacy by and on the part of the Roma has had a certain backlash
effect in Central Europe, just
as the publicity attending the attempts of Czech Roma to gain asylum
in the West has lead, in the
opinion of some Roma activists, to an increase in anti-Roma prejudice
in America and Western
Europe (Hancock). As an index of the worsening conditions in
which many Roma in the Czech
Republic live, there have recently been several episodes of Romani
retaliation violence against
police and others, and there is fear of a similar trend starting in
Hungary.
The Roma and the European
Union Accession Process
The emphasis in various European Union documents on the enforcement
of human rights,
specifically with respect to the Roma, as a requirement for accession
of Central European
countries to full membership in the European Union needs to be balanced
against three
considerations. First, these human rights concerns compose only
one category of accession
standards, and this is a category which tends, in fact, to take back
seat to the numerous technical
requirements concerning legal, market, and governmental procedures
(Muller). Second, the
Roma are often treated as second class citizens in the major countries
currently composing the
European Union and it can be argued that something like a tacit understanding
exists that Romani
human rights records will not be a crucial issue when it comes to final
accession decisions, despite
the rhetoric to the contrary.
Third, many of the present European Union countries are extremely
concerned by the
prospect of large influxes of Roma and other refugees from such countries
as the former
Yugoslavia and Albania inundating Western Europe. Whether
these fears are warranted, they
play a significant part in national and EU politics. In the minds
of most EU countries, the
Central European countries are viewed as a worrisome source of entrance
of immigrant and
undocumented populations in Europe from further east and from Third
World Countries. In
theory, free movement of populations within the EU is supposed to be
balanced by a
strengthening of its external borders, and Central European countries
are already feeling very
strong pressures to seal off their borders to the east and south (Western
Europe’s). They are also
being pressured by individual EU member countries through bilateral
treaties to prevent asylum
seekers from transiting through their countries to Germany and England.
No Central European
government can reasonably doubt that in future accession negotiations,
and when applications are
finally judged, the issue of secure borders will trump that of the
human rights records of
governments with respect to minority populations such as the Roma.
Further, it is not a forgone
conclusion at this point that the Central European countries will be
admitted into the EU, and
certainly not that this will occur “in a timely fashion.” Increasing
frustration has been expressed
by the Hungarian government and others about the very slow rate of
movement in that direction,
and about the shifting positions, requirements, politics and signals
emanating from the western
European countries and EU bodies. There is some amount of backlash
against the demands of the
EU accession process and against the liberal values on which it is
based, including those
concerning human rights and democratic process.
Globalization and the Roma
In a recent article, Andras Biro, the President of the Europan
Roma Rights Center in
Budapest, summed up the problems facing the Roma as follows:
The future of
the Roma will greatly depend on how deeply and at what pace the
societies and economies of CEE are integrated
into the process of globalization.
Will, for instance, the gap in the labour
market widen as production and services
require ever more sophisticated skills?
What happens if the influence of right wing
parties continues to grow and exclusion and
violence take on more serious
proportions? Is assimilation or integration
the answer? How will unemployed
urban Roma youth deal with its growing frustrations?
Is the Los Angeles syndrom
a real threat? What educational
strategies are appropriate for Roma children at a
time when employment opportunities are not
only diminishing but changing in
character? Is the revival of disappearing
traditional Roma skills a practical option?
What about family planning: can the Third
World-like rate of demographic growth
continue? (Biro 34)
The prospects facing the Roma in Central Europe are daunting, to say
the least. Castells and
others have written about the way in which the global flows of capital,
information, and people
tend to create areas within countries and regions, and even within
urban areas, where certain
groups are left behind, without relevant competencies, attitudes, or
resources. The Roma are
prime candidates for such a fate. Despite the fundamentally rural
character of their traditional
culture, the Roma of Central Europe are likely to be congregated increasingly
in the slums of
Budapest, where they already number close to one hundred thousand,
and other cities. Here, if
conditions continue to worsen, what Biro calls the “Los Angeles effect”
may well occur. At a
1995 Council of Europe conference on cities, the then Mayor of Budapest
spoke of increases in
violence directed against Roma because of the worsening economic conditions
within the country.
In such strained circumstances urban Roma are doubly targets for persecution,
not only because
of traditional prejudices but also because they are perceived as the
recipients of large amounts of
public aid and special treatment.
The Council of Europe, some NGOs, and local governments are trying
to develop a
concept of nonexclusive identity and citizenship based on place.
An official of the city of
Strasbourg, where the Council has its headquarters, spoke of these
attempts at the conference
alluded to above:
However, we
are also working towards a citizenship based on residence in other
ways, such as welcoming exiled or persecuted
writers as part of the initiative taken
by the International Parliament of Writers.
To be a citizen of Strasbourg is
therefore to belong to a place and a population
and to find a new identity without
renouncing one's history, convictions or origins.
This new form of citizenship and representation is an integral part of
the
approach aimed at injecting life into new
forms of mediation in order to achieve
urban equality; that is equality between residents
and between districts. (Local
democracy 31)
Similarly, Mr. Abdou Menebhi, speaking on behalf of The Migrant Forum’s
proposal on
"citizenship and participation in community policymaking, ” claimed
that "towns and cities have a
duty to educate people in a European citizenship dissociated from nationality.
All towns and
cities with migrants should allow the setting up of advisory councils
as a first step towards
participation in community and public life" (59). Such a concept
of European citizenship, closely
allied to transnaitonal concepts of human rights, would certainly benefit
the Roma, whether or not
they are migrant.
Saskia Sassen has recently claimed that the very fact that a
kind of “global underclass” of
poor, unskilled, and often immigrant people tends to congregate in
cities that are hubs of the
Global Economy may actually work to give these people a chance to make
themselves and their
needs and claims visible to those wielding political and economic power
(xxi). Perhaps there may
be some such effect in Central Europe, but this is, of course, a logic
of desperation–a putting of a
most promising possible construal on a prospect that is not promising.
Finally, to return to the increasing flow of human rights regimes,
monitoring apparatuses,
and pressures in Hungary and the Czech Republic, nothing I have said
should be taken to
undercut the value and importance of these undertakings. Clearly
they do stand to be of some
help to the Roma of the region. And clearly, it is important
for a government to be serious,
consistent, and aggressive in trying to ensure the human rights of
the Roma and other minority
groups through its laws and administrative structures. However,
such efforts cannot countervail
against a combination of popular prejudice, local administrative resistance,
and the perception of
deteriorating economic circumstances, with its concomitant danger of
political instability. In
trying to incorporate the whole of Central Europe, the European Union
is engaged in an
undertaking of Herculean dimensions. In trying to weave an effective
and enforceable web of
human rights regimes, the United Nations and the European community
are engaged in an even
grander and more difficult undertaking. To use of the metaphor
of global flows, the flow of
human rights regimens will have difficulty not being submerged by the
flows of capital and the
flows of hapless people, but some of the global flows of information
today concern human rights
and these flows can only be expected to increase in the future.
Whatever the fate of the Roma of
Central Europe, it will be increasingly well documented and it will
be accompanied by increasingly
numerous and intense efforts on the parts of NGOs and transnaitonal
organizations.