Ottawa to probe cause of Roma refugee increase from Europe

[Concerned Migrants]

Toronto Star

Ottawa to probe cause of Roma refugee increase

Increase in applications prompts mission to Czech Republic

Mar 10, 2009 04:30 AM

Lesley Ciarula Taylor
IMMIGRATION REPORTER

Canada is accepting almost all Roma from the Czech Republic as refugees and is
sending a fact-finding mission there to find out why so many are keen to leave.

In 2008, 853 people applied for refugee status from the Czech Republic, which
on Jan. 1 took over presidency of the European Union council for a six-month
term. Most of the refugee cases are pending; 106 have since dropped their
claims.

The Immigration and Refugee Board has so far accepted 84 people as Czech
refugees and rejected five, a rate of 94.4 per cent.

That's much higher than for other countries with Roma, once called gypsies.

"Some of the worst things are happening at the municipal level, which the
national government has very little control of," said Donald Sparling, a
Canadian who is director of the Office for International Studies at Masaryk
University in Brno, Czech Republic.

Towns are turning over public housing to developers, who move the Roma to
"horrible conditions" in the countryside, he said.

"This is happening in many, many places."

The refugee board's 10-day mission, tentatively starting March 21, will
quiz Czech government and non-government authorities. The flood of asylum
seekers resumed in late 2007 after Ottawa lifted a visa curb imposed after an
exodus of 4,000 Roma a decade ago.

"Roma aren't in danger of their lives the way they were in the late
1990s," said Sparling, but in the past year there has been a rise in
neo-Nazi groups that target them.

"It's very clear large segments of the public are in favour of
this."

The Canadian mission will probe how Czech Roma are treated, what kind of
protection they have against violence and intimidation, and whether they have
safe places to move to inside the republic.

Paul St. Clair at the Roma Community Centre in Toronto has asked Ottawa to add
three areas of interest to this list: the segregated schools where many Roma
children are sent; the emergence of neo-Nazi parties; and what non-government
organizations and Roma journalists have to say.

"A lot of NGOs are doing tremendous work," Sparling said. "Many
things have changed in the last decade, particularly among the younger
generation."

But the presence of two registered parties with openly white supremacist
programs amounts to "state-condoned racism," St. Clair said. And
segregated schools still exist, he said, although they were supposed to be
abolished in 2005,

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