Brussels toughens line on Roma discrimination

When Christian Mikova, a 10-year old Czech Romani, was taken to a psychiatrist and told he had mental disabilities, his mother knew what was coming next.

"He was given pills for mental illness. They made him lethargic, tired and unable to concentrate in school," says Marcela Mikova. "'If you make any trouble,' his teachers said, 'we will send you to the mad house'."

Ms Mikova had seen it before. Christian's older brother Julius won a landmark court case in 2007 at the European Court of Human Rights that ruled the Czech Republic had violated the rights of Romani children by putting them in special schools for children with learning difficulties.

But "nothing has changed," Ms Mikova says. "[Christian] has suffered from the same problems, bullied by teachers and students. Just for being Roma."

Despite the ECHR ruling, the Czech Republic continues to send thousands of Romani children to schools designed for pupils with mental disabilities. Tens of thousands more are forced to study in segregated schools or are bullied by non-Roma students and staff, according to campaign groups that say Prague's policies encourage racial discrimination.

The European Commission launched infringement proceedings against the Czech government in September - the first time Brussels had targeted a member state using anti-discrimination legislation.

On Wednesday, the commission broadened its investigation to neighbouring Slovakia, where Romani people also suffer mistreatment. The move by the EU's executive arm indicates it is willing to take a tougher line with central European member states over their treatment of minorities, having largely skirted the issue since the bloc's enlargement in 2004.

Salil Shetty, secretary-general of Amnesty International, the human rights organisation, says: "This is racism. It is colour and race. It is extraordinary that this is happening in Europe."

The Roma, descendants of people who came to Europe from India roughly 1,000 years ago, are a close-knit ethnic group with their own language and culture. There are thought to be about 4m Roma in Europe, predominantly in central and eastern Europe as well as Spain and France. There is also a Roma community in the US.

Their treatment is an awkward issue for the EU. It made improving conditions for Romani people a key demand of a host of central and eastern European states that joined the bloc 11 years ago. But discrimination remains prevalent, and Roma are often marginalised in education, healthcare and employment access.

That marginalisation is particularly acute in the Czech Republic, which enforced the sterilisation of Romani women in the 1970s. Disproportionate numbers of Czech Romani been sent to schools designed for children with disabilities - renamed "practical schools" in 2005 - for decades.

<

The tabular content relating to this article is not available to view. Apologies in advance for the inconvenience caused.

While such educational segregation of Roma takes place in other countries such as France and Greece, human rights groups say, the failure of the Czech government to tackle the issue since the 2007 ruling has made them the focus of the EU's anti-discrimination efforts.

In private, however, Czech politicians are dismissive of the EU's threats, and see the issue as merely a technical dispute with the commission, rather than a social problem needing to be tackled.

"I am intrigued how this Mr from India who spends two days in the Czech Republic assesses segregation," Marcel Chladek, the country's education minister, told Czech television, referring to Amnesty's Mr Shetty, who is of Indian decent.

"I absolutely reject that the Czech system discriminates against Roma," Mr Chladek added.

Jiri Dienstbier, the country's minister for human rights declined a request to speak to the Financial Times.

In Ostrava, the Czech Republic's third-largest city and home to one of the country's largest Roma communities, most Romani children study in schools that have been physically divided into two buildings.

When 11-year old Betty Kovacova complained to her teacher that her classmates were bullying her and calling her a "gypsy", she says she was told: "Well, you are a gypsy."

"The teachers do not care . . . and the parents of the other children tell them to hate Roma. They say to not be friends or play with the 'gypsy kids'."

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that mainstream schools that do accept Roma students find that non-Roma parents withdraw their children, often using the argument that they slow the learning of others.

Sona Tarhoviska, headteacher of Ostrava's Premysl Pitter primary school, says that when her school became popular with Roma, "the white children left".

"Children from socially deprived backgrounds are considered mentally disabled," she says. "Changing our society's thinking could take 30 to 40 years".

© The Financial Times Limited 2015. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation