Canada’s immigration minister, Jason Kenney, argued that most refugee claimants from Mexico were in fact middle-class economic migrants, and also pointed to “bogus” refugee claims from the Czech Republic, most filed by members of the country’s Roma, or gypsy, community.

Ottawa slapped visas on both countries on July 15. Just a couple weeks later, Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board publicly released the second of two reports from a March fact-finding mission to the Czech Republic, noting the Roma minority face “negative societal perceptions (including discrimination), inadequate housing, poor education, high unemployment, as well as far-right extremist activism.”

Much has been written about the immediate causes for the massive influx of Czech Roma asylum seekers to the Great White North — which began after Ottawa lifted the visa requirement in late 2007 — with the focus on the intensification of hate crimes in the Czech Republic over the past year, coinciding with unprecedented coordination between far-right political groups and skinheads.

Ales Horvath, a Roma businessman from the town of Pardubice who has been badly beaten twice by skinheads, says the constant — and rising — threat of violence pushed hundreds of Roma to pack their families off to Canada. “We are decent people. But we can’t go out into society like normal people,” Horvath told me. “Discrimination is so common here that people don’t even recognize it as discrimination. It has become normal. Society is pushing us into a corner more and more.”

In the international press — and to a large degree also the Czech press — debate has centered on the question of whether the Roma heading for Canada are legitimate refugees or simply economic migrants (or opportunists seeking to tap into a more generous social welfare system). But the role of capitalism is fanning the flames of extremism — by which I do not mean the catch-all explanation of the global financial crisis — has gone largely ignored.

The new ghettos

Widespread discrimination aside (and it’s no small thing), over the past 20 years, the Roma were literally pushed to the edge of Czech society. Along with the break-neck privatization (and corrupt practices) that gave birth to the term “the Wild East,” an unprecedented building boom in the country has lead to the creation of new Roma ghettos.

Before the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the Roma were far more integrated into Czech society, at least in terms of proximity, with white Czechs and Roma families living side by side, albeit not without tension. By the late 1990s, however, municipalities both large and small began in earnest to sell off properties, including the housing estates in which many Roma were living.

In 2006, prominent sociologist Ivan Gabal and a team of researchers released a study showing that nearly one-third of the Roma population lived in 250 new neighborhoods — usually run-down housing estates or dilapidated buildings on the outskirts of towns — that had come into being following the massive privatization of public housing in the 1990s.

Many of the Roma who found themselves in these ghettos, often in high-unemployment regions, had been evicted (along with “problematic inhabitants,” such as rent defaulters) from neighborhoods in Prague and other big cities undergoing free-market gentrification. Within these ghettos, Gabal’s researchers found that more than 95 percent of inhabitants were out of work.

Such ghettos make visible and easy targets for right-wing extremists. Such was the case with Janov, an isolated complex of neglected high rises in the Litvinov region, where neo-Nazis marching in step with members of fringe far-right Workers’ Party clashed with Roma, capturing headlines on both sides of the Atlantic.

“The last half year has been marked by attempts to openly attack Roma communities, preceded by political gatherings, in particular of the Workers Party — that is new, new, new,”  said Gwendolyn Albert, who writes an annual country report on the Czech Republic for the European Network Against Racism, in a recent interview.

“Czech public officials, from mayors to ministers, have taken a page from the tactics of fringe neo-Nazi parties for political gain,” Albert says. “They are specifically targeting the issue of the proportionally large number of Roma citizens on welfare in this country as part of their populist political agendas.”

The Czech government is now considering a ban on the Workers Party and another extremist group, the National Party, which during the June elections for the European Parliament (incredibly) broadcast a video on Czech public television calling for “the final solution” to the Roma “question.” But for those trapped eking out a living in the new ghettos, the chance for a new life in Canada is another dream squashed.

If you ever doubted that Europeans (both “old” and “new”) have a more relaxed attitude to the private lives of public figures than do their American cousins, consider the following.

Just ahead of the European Parliament elections in June, paparazzi photos surfaced of former center-right Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek sunning himself au naturale in the company of young women – and in an apparent state of arousal – at the seaside villa of his scandal-plagued Italian counterpart, Silvio Berlusconi. Topolanek, who fathered a child out of wedlock with a fellow parliamentarian, saw his turn at the helm of the rotating European Union presidency cut short by a no-confidence vote. But it had nothing to do with his libido and in time he rather cheekily acknowledged that he was the nude dude in a photo that appeared in the left-leaning Spanish paper El País.

Noting that the racy article appeared on the very day Czechs started voting in the European elections, Topolanek turned the tables, saying he didn’t realize “that these elections were so important for European socialists that they had to come up with such ridiculous attacks and manipulations.”

But apart from explaining himself to his partner (Berlusconi’s guests at the summer romp allegedly included call girls) Topolanek needn’t have worried: The Civic Democratic Party of which he remains chairman readily beat out the main opposition Social Democrats in the races for the country’s 22 seats in the EU parliament. Berlusconi, too, triumphed at the polls.

Despite a global recession that many on both sides of the pond see as brought on by free-market policies and deregulation, European voters by and large turned to the right for a way to get out of the mess, casting their ballots for conservative parties. Furthermore, workers who were traditionally allied with mainstream leftist parties also gravitated toward right-wing and far-right upstart parties (Topolanek’s party had a disastrous showing in last autumn’s local and Senate elections).

Italy’s Northern League – the driving force behind recent legislation making it a crime to be an illegal immigrant in that country – took around 10 percent of the vote, giving it eight seats, while in the United Kingdom the British National Party – in existence for 27 years – marked its first parliamentary success, winning four seats. Other anti-immigrant and far-right groups also made significant gains. In the Netherlands, the anti-Islam Freedom Party of the filmmaker Geert Wilders won around 17 percent of the vote, making it the second strongest Dutch party heading to Brussels and Strasbourg. The right-wing populist True Finns won around 14 percent of the vote in Finland, up from just 0.5 percent in 2004, and the right-wing populist Danish People’s Party increased its share of the vote from 6.8 percent in 2004 to around 15 percent.

Low turnout, heady times for extremists

Altogether, the new European Parliament will have more than 30 members who could be described as being on the extreme right, and in some cases xenophobic or outright racist. Among the ex-communist EU member states in particular – where the average turnout was just over 31 percent, compared with an overall average of 43 percent for the 27-nation bloc – such splinter groups did especially well. In many cases, extreme-right parties captured enough of the protest vote to win seats for the first time, aided by the historically low voter turnout and unprecedented organization between minor politicians and splinter hate groups.

The most militant and successful of them all, the neo-fascist party Jobbik (For a Better Hungary), campaigned largely against “Gypsy crime” and the influence of other minorities, got nearly 15 percent of the vote and will send three representatives to the new European Parliament. “So-called proud Hungarian Jews should go back to playing with their tiny little circumcised tails,” said future MEP Krisztina Morvai, leaving little doubt as to her party’s leanings, despite the more sophisticated coded language of the official campaign.

The hardliners of the Slovak National Party also won a seat, as did the Greater Romania Party (with three seats), in part by denouncing the presence and influence of their countries’ sizeable ethnic Hungarian minorities, while Bulgaria’s aptly-named ultra-nationalist and anti-EU party Ataka (Attack) got two seats, winning support through its verbal assaults on that country’s ethnic Turks.

Far-right parties won no seats in Poland even though the League of Polish Families secured 10 back in 2004. But elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe, although parties failed to make it to the European Parliament they did well enough to secure the 1 percent of the domestic vote needed to qualify for funding from the state. Such is the case with the Czech Workers Party, which cooperated with neo-Nazi groups to stage hostile marches cutting through Romani neighborhoods, mainly in the towns and regions with chronic or rising unemployment (Topolanek’s government gave lip service to shutting the party down, but didn’t make it a priority).

In November 2008, hundreds of Workers Party supporters joined skinhead groups to attack a Romani neighborhood in Litvinov, north of Prague, armed with cobblestones and petrol bombs. The Czech extreme-right National Party, which unlike the Workers Party didn’t pass the 1 percent threshold, succeeded in airing a call for a “final solution” to the Gypsy issue in a campaign spot on public television that was later pulled.

In terms of militant organization, Jobbik took things a step further, taking over leadership of the uniformed Magyar Garda (Hungarian Guard) wing, whose several thousand members march in formation sporting black paramilitary-style uniforms. In Hungary and in the Czech Republic, racist murders and petrol bombings have made international headlines in recent months, leading Roma to form self-defense squads to patrol their neighborhoods. Hundreds of Czech Roma have sought asylum in Western Europe and, increasingly, Canada.

Divided they stand

As the Brussels correspondent of the London Times noted, neo-fascist Europeans do not have a history of cooperation. In 2007 a group of far-right MEPs formed the 23-member Identity-Tradition-Sovereignty bloc; it broke up after 11 months when MEPs from the Greater Romania party quit over remarks by Il Duce‘s granddaughter Alessandra Mussolini, who said that all Romanians were criminals.

Indeed, while individual MEPs from the Dutch Freedom Party, the Danish People’s Party, and others may oppose immigration, their parties have steered clear of joining with the more militant nationalists from the British National Party, France’s Front National, and newcomer Jobbik (which in turn is highly unlikely to form an alliance with Slovak and Romanian parties whose support base is anti-Hungarian).

However, while there is little reason to believe that far-right extremists in the European Parliament will cobble together a cohesive nationalist bloc (and their less radical cousins are gravitating toward the Tories’ proposed European Conservatives grouping), there is cause for real concern. The mere presence of such parties in the chambers of Brussels and Strasbourg lends tacit legitimacy to the hateful domestic movements that spawned them.

There is also a danger that the newest democracies could take a page from Berlusconi’s book: To maintain power, the Italian media mogul’s new center-right People of Freedom Party this March merged with the National Alliance and Alessandra Mussolini’s Social Alternative on the far right.

Back in the Czech Republic, at least, there is some encouraging news: a recent poll shows over two-thirds of Czechs agreed with recently named Interior Minister Martin Pecina’s plan to ask a court to dissolve the National Party, and the ministry has also said it will try to ban the far-right Workers Party. But Berlusconi’s old friend and partner-in-crime Topolanek failed to take such action on his watch, missing an opportunity to set an example for the whole of the EU.

(An earlier version of this piece appeared in Transitions online magazine)

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/centraleasterneurope/2009/07/08/naked-ambition-the-rise-of-the-european-right/feed/ 0 http://www.thefastertimes.com/centraleasterneurope/2009/07/08/address-unknown-dishonoring-serbias-gypsy-king/ http://thefastertimes.com/centraleasterneurope/2009/07/08/address-unknown-dishonoring-serbias-gypsy-king/#comments Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:11:03 +0000 Brian Kenety http://thefastertimes.com/centraleasterneurope/?p=16 Now come, all the world’s Rom

For the Romani road has opened

The time’s arrived to arise

We shall stand up as one

Romanies, o fellow Rom

– lyrics to Djelem, Djelem

A year ago this June a heart attack claimed the life of Saban Bajramovic, Serbia’s fabled King of the Gypsy singers and the professed author of some 700 songs, including “Djelem, Djelem,” a soulful ballad that would become the official national anthem for the Romani people, Europe’s largest minority group.

Unable to pay for medical treatment, Bajramovic died aged 72, just weeks after having been promised a special national pension as a “deserving artist from Serbia” by Social Affairs Minister Rasim Ljajic, the first Minister of Human and Minority Rights after the fall of Slobodan Milosevic.

Some 10,000 people turned out for the funeral in his hometown of Nis, among them Serbian President Boris Tadic and former Prime Minister Zoran Zivkovic. The singer was given the posthumous honor of burial in the new “Lane of Renowned Citizens” of the city cemetery.

This spring, the City Assembly of Nis went a step further, announcing that ahead of the anniversary of his death, they would honor native son Bajramovic by naming renaming a street, Juzni bulevar (Southern boulevard), after him.

A Bridge (Street) Too Far

“All the people of Nis should be proud that this street was named after Saban and that’s the least Saban deserves – from his city and his neighbors,” said former Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Zivkovic, a great fan of the singer who even helped fund the recording of one of Bajramovic’s last albums.

But for residents of the newly christened “Saban Bajramovic Boulevard,” the colorful singer – perhaps best known abroad for tunes like Bubamara (Ladybird) featured in Serbian director Emir Kusturica’s comedy Black Cat, White Cat – appears to be anything but a favorite son.

“We wanted to organize protests and blockades, but eventually we opted for civil disobedience,” Zoran Lukovic, who along with several hundred others has signed a petition against the name change, told BalkanInsight. “We will change our registered addresses to those of our families and neighbors, so that the boulevard will have no registered residents at all.”

According to right group Amnesty International, the Romani community “suffers massive discrimination throughout Europe. Denied their rights to housing, employment, healthcare and education, Roma are often victims of forced evictions, racist attacks and police ill-treatment.”

The protest could prove a major embarrassment to Serbia, whose track record on minority rights (think “ethnic cleansing”) is shaky at best, and which currently holds the Presidency of the “Decade of Roma Inclusion” international initiative aimed at improving the welfare of the group.

The Nat King Cole of Nis

Born in Nis in 1936, Bajramovic’s parents were Muslims from the Arlije tribe of Roma, who found sporadic work as day laborers — often far afield, leaving him to play on the streets. Orphaned young and never having finished primary school, military conscription didn’t sit well with Bajramovic; at 19, he was arrested for desertion, a serious offense in communist times.

The Yugoslav military court, however, had little sympathy for Bajramovic’s explanation for going AWOL – he couldn’t write and so need to see talk to his girlfriend in person – and less patience still for his boast that no prison term could break him.

The judges tacked on another two and a half years to Bajramovic’s three-year sentence at Goli Otok, a notorious island prison camp where thousands of dissidents and other inmates perished doing hard labor. But it was there that Bajramovic, an earthy baritone with perfect musical pitch, learned to read and began penning his own compositions.

Upon his release from prison in the early 1960s, Bajramovic formed the band Black Mamba, and over the coming decades would rise from star of the local Romani wedding circuit to fame on the world music scene, named by Time magazine as among the world’s top ten jazz singers.

“I decided to be a musician because music is God’s creation,” the singer, dubbed the Frank Sinatra of the East, said in an interview with the Serbian daily Blic shortly before his death. “I deserve to be called the king of Gypsy music, the ‘Nat King Cole from Nis’ — nobody can replace me, each singer has at least parts of my songs.”

In accordance with his wishes, Bajramovic was buried in his trademark white suit, holding the sheet music for the Romani national anthem “Djelem, Djelem” at his breast.

Ahead of New Year’s Day and for weeks after it passed, as a correspondent for Interfax in the Czech Republic  –  which took over the helm of the rotating European Union presidency just as the Russian-Ukrainian gas war broke out  –  I was obliged to make daily inquiries to see whether Ukrainian gas was reaching the border stations at neighboring Slovakia, the first stop for deliveries in the EU, and, if not, what the Czechs intended to do about it.

Within two weeks a deal was reached whereby Ukraine, through which some 80% of Russian gas supplies to the EU are transported, agreed to pay Gazprom something closer to the market rate. But the gas war, which not only cut short my ski trip but came at the height of a bitterly cold winter, leaving tens of thousands without heat, had an unintended consequence for Moscow: in a word, Nabucco.

Russia has naturally long balked at any move by former Soviet satellite states toward the west (long before saber rattling over the proposed U.S. radar station, for example, there was NATO expansion) and used energy supplies as a political tool, in Ukraine and beyond.

But Moscow took a surprisingly diplomatic tone with regard to two major EU summits advancing an agenda that Russia sees as an affront to its power and pocketbook: the sweeping Eastern Partnership political initiative, agreed now in principle, and the push for a “southern corridor” for energy supplies that would bypass Mother Russia, although this drive for energy security remains further down the pipeline.

Formally launched on May 7, the EU’s Eastern Partnership initiative aims to bolster stability in the region by accelerating “political association and further economic integration” between the EU and six former Soviet nations (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine).

EU leaders meeting in Prague agreed to invest  600 million Euros in the project up to 2013 while the six countries pledged to meet benchmarks for democratic reform, the rule of law and human rights policies.

“This is not anti-Russian,” Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra told Reuters.”They are our close eastern neighbors and we have a vital interest in their stability and prosperity. This is an offer, not an EU projection of force.”

Indeed, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who has repeatedly warned against the creation of new dividing lines in Europe and called the initiative an attempt by the bloc to spread its “sphere of influence,” softened his tone ahead of the summit, following a meeting with Polish counterpart Radoslaw Sikorski.

“We shared our concerns that there are those who may wish to present the invited participants with the choice: either you are with Russia, or with the European Union,” he told reporters. “We appreciated the explanation Mr Sikorski gave that this was not the plan of the Polish as initiators of the program.”

In the pipeline

“Wait,” you rightly may ask, “doesn’t Brussels already have a European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), launched in 2003, that could do the same thing?” Yes, but technically that was a “bilateral” affair, and the Eastern Partnership creates a “multilateral” dimension.

Energy is also a key aspect of the Eastern Partnership and of increasingly greater concern for Moscow than its less tangible sphere of influence. Here’s where the “multilateralism” comes in. The initiative calls for strengthened energy security cooperation, including thorough support (i.e. baksheesh) for investment in infrastructure. As Petr Kratochvil, deputy director at Prague’s Institute of International Relations (IRR), put it, “If you plan a pipeline then you definitely need cooperation among a number of partner and member countries.”

Following a separate, overlapping summit in the Czech capital on May 8, the EU agreed with gas-rich Azerbaijan and Egypt, and potential transit counties Georgia and Turkey, to boost plans for the multi-billion-Euro Nabucco gas pipeline stretching from the Caspian Sea region and the Middle East – and aimed at reducing the EU’s reliance on gas from Russia.

Adding insult to injury, common to the two initiatives is Georgia, a country whose location on the Black Sea has made it an important transit route for gas and oil to Europe, and since last summer’s five-day war with Russia over the breakaway South Ossetia, a flashpoint for East-West relations.

That flame continues to burn brightly, with the latest spark igniting ahead of NATO’s planned Partnership for Peace exercises in Georgia — criticized by Russia as a provocation — and tit-for-tat expulsion of NATO and Russian diplomats triggered by Moscow’s alleged attempts to destabilize the South Caucasus.