Prague - Minister for Human Rights and Minorities Džamila Stehlíková visited Litvínov, a north Bohemian town that recently witnessed two riots of right-wing radicals protesting against the local Romani community.
At the meeting with councillors and representatives of Janov inhabitants, Minister Stehlíková promised help in the near future. She said she would propose the cabinet to include Janov in the list of excluded localities that are entitled to get additional fundings for crime prevention and social street workers.
"I apologized to the local people because two years ago I promised Janov would be the number one on the list of the excluded localities that are helped by the Agency for social inclusion of Romany. I see it has not happened and I admit it is a mistake," said Stehlíková to journalists. "I want to correct that," she added.
Tense atmosphere
The atmosphere in Janov is undeniably tense. The locals have been long complaining about the Roma community. Their voices of concern being unheard, they joined the ranks of the extremists on the ominous day of November 17.
The recent wave of Romany moving in Janov come allegedly from eastern Slovakia.
"The people that have come to Janov in the past few years are extremely socially deprived. They have entirely different values than the Romani that came to Janov four years ago," Miroslav Brož of the People in Need foundation said for Aktuálně.cz.
They are often in big debts, added Brož, they are unemployable owing to a low qualification, frustrated, deprived and aggressive.
So what went wrong? A few years ago, the Litvínov town hall sold flats to real estates that used them for moving in people from lucrative areas, as reported in Czech broadsheet daily Mladá Fronta DNES. These were mostly Romany who were often unemployed and uncapable to pay rent.
"We used to live here quite peacefully with the first Roma people who came here a long time ago. But with the new ones, there are constantly some problems," says a former inhabitant of Janov for MF DNES.
Visit of Čunek
Litvínov municipal authorities have spoken earlier with Regional Development Minister Jiří Čunek from the Christian Democratic Party (KDU-ČSL).
Jiří Čunek is famous for eviction of 360 Roma families from their homes in south Moravian town of Vsetín to substandard housing projects. Čunek was badly critized for the eviction and his anti-Roma stance by the US State Department in its annual country report on the state of human rights.
