COHRE Protest CERD Early Waring Czech Republic 2008

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Peacework Development Fund Ječná 2, 120 00 Praha 2, Czech Republic Phone +420 774 895 444 E-mail: gwen@peacework.org www.peacework.org

Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions 83 Rue de Montbrillant, Geneva, 1202, Switzerland Phone: (41-22) 734-1028; Fax: (41-22) 733-1126 E-mail: cohre@cohre.org http://cohre.org

Appeal for Early Warning and/or Urgent Action To: CERD Committee From: Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), Peacework Development Fund (Peacework) Situation in Novy Jicin, Czech Republic, for consideration under the CERD Re: Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedures, under its 2008 revision.

Date: 11 March 2008

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Organizations Party to this Communication The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) is an international, nongovernmental, human rights organisation with its head office in Geneva, Switzerland.

COHRE works to promote and protect economic, social and cultural rights, including the rights to adequate housing, water and the prevention of forced evictions around the world. COHRE’s work involves housing and water rights training and education programmes for civil society organisations, legislators, municipal councillors and human rights practitioners; research and publications; monitoring, documenting and preventing forced evictions; undertaking fact-finding missions; participation and advocacy within the United Nations and regional human rights bodies; and providing legal advocacy and advice to communities and organizations involved in housing rights campaigns. COHRE has Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. Further information about COHRE is available at www.cohre.org.

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The Peacework Development Fund manages over 100 volunteer projects per year throughout Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe. Peacework volunteers contribute assistance and expertise to communities in the areas of agriculture and livelihood, ecology and the environment, health and medicine, issues affecting children, literacy and education, and women’s initiatives. This assistance includes helping local partners identify the root causes of such phenomena as school dropout, unemployment, or illhealth in order to address these issues and contributes to the greater enjoyment of human rights by all. For further information, please see www.peacework.org The submitting organisations have direct research and practitioner experience related to the human rights situation of Roma in the Czech Republic. The organizations party to this communication urge the CERD Committee to undertake any and all relevant measures under its Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedures in connection with the current threatened eviction crisis targeting circa 130 Romani persons in the town of Novy Jicin, Czech Republic.

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Matter at Issue in this Communication: Ongoing Events in Novy Jicin According to first-hand documentary field research, as well as related research, undertaken by COHRE and Peacework from May to September 2007 in the town of Novy Jicin, several municipally-owned buildings have been occupied by Romani tenants there for a number of years. At the end of 2006, plans were announced to sell the buildings to private owners for conversion into luxury housing; circa 130 persons in total face imminent eviction from their housing.

At the time of its decision, municipal officials told the media that all the residents of the building are indebted to the local housing authority, which is not true. Such claims reinforce general prejudices in Czech society regarding the Roma as “abusers” of social welfare. Some of the tenants who have always paid their rent are currently taking legal action with the assistance of a local civic association to challenge the evictions.

The tenants’ attorney reports that some of the buildings have already been sold to a local attorney, Mr. J.K., who is also a member of the local government. Some of the tenants never received any information from the court and thus never had a chance to participate in their own proceedings. The attorney, who has represented many tenants in similar cases, says she has never witnessed this kind of conduct from the courts before.

One example of the type of proceedings currently prevailing in Novy Jicin concerns the K. family. The new private owner of the property where the K family resides refused to renew any of the tenants’ leases. The K. family refused to vacate the premises after their lease expired in March 2007. The owner filed an eviction order against them with the Novy Jicin District Court. The K. family has 13 members, most of whom are minors. At a hearing on 13 September 2007, the judge ruled the K family were obliged to vacate their flat and were not entitled to substitute housing; this ruling has been appealed. The family’s attorney states that the judge did not consider any international law arguments,

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although these were provided. As of the date of this petition, the K. family is still in their original housing waiting for the results of the appeals hearing.

In general as concerns these families, as of 5 March 2008, the situation was as follows: The leases have expired for approximately 20 Romani families whose members included disabled persons and minors. First-instance decisions issued to date all hold that these people are to be evicted without substitute accommodation being provided them; not all tenants have received first-instance decisions. The attorney has appealed the decisions for those tenants with whom she is in touch.

The first appeals hearing for the G.I. family took place at the Ostrava Regional Court on 5 March 2008. Should the family lose their appeal, the landlord could evict them as early as one month after the verdict date; the verdict will reportedly be issued on 11 March.

The G.I. family are pensioners and their son; the father of the family has many health problems as he donated a kidney to his brother. Further first-instance hearing dates for other families are scheduled as follows: On 13 March the G. family (seven members, six of whom are women, two of whom are physically handicapped, one of whom is a sevenmonth-old infant); the attorney expects to have to appeal the ruling. On 15 March, the K.A. family (six members, four of whom are minors); the attorney expects to have to appeal the ruling. On 3 April there will be a second-instance hearing in the case of the Z. family. Appeals hearings are also being scheduled for at least five other families. The attorney knows there are other families who would require legal, assistance with whom she is not in touch, because the social workers are not working on their cases; she provided the example of one family in which the leaseholders (the parents) emigrated to England, and their daughter is living with her children in their flat. The eviction order was issued without the leaseholders ever receiving the court communications.

The attorney for these families notes that a verdict to evict one family has the potential to set off a “domino effect� in which the other families will abandon their efforts to redress the situation. Indeed, those interested in evicting Romani tenants from properties or neighbourhoods appear to count on such an effect as part of their strategy.

The families’ attorney reports that those families who have had to represent themselves before the courts state that their first-instance hearings lasted only a few minutes. She also reports that local social workers are not providing these families with any meaningful assistance.

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General Background: Forced Evictions and Racial Segregation of Roma in the Field of Housing in the Czech Republic In the Czech Republic, many Roma live in substandard, racially segregated ghettos, as recently documented by the Czech Labour and Social Affairs Ministry.1 According to this recent government study, there are more than 300 impoverished localities in which

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The existence of such ghettos has been documented by sociologists contracted by the Czech Labour and Social Affairs Ministry and is available in an interactive map at http://www.esfcr.cz/mapa/int_CR.html.

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predominantly Roma live. This may concern as many as 80 000 persons, but there is no adequate official data available.

Roma have been forcibly evicted from housing, in many cases allegedly because of rent arrears. However, even Romani tenants who honour the terms of their leases have been subjected to forced eviction. Additional issues with respect to the housing rights of Roma in the Czech Republic include homelessness, overcrowding, discrimination in the allocation of state or municipally-owned housing, and the concomitant effects of family disruption and institutionalisation of Romani children.

As to the latter matter, the Czech Republic has one of the highest percentages of children in institutional care in Europe. Government statistics from the Institute of Heath Information and Statistics (UZIS) indicate that in the year 2006, 51% of all infants placed in institutions for children three years of age or younger were placed there for “social” reasons.2 A lack of adequate and affordable social housing is one of the key reasons for these high figures of institutional placement of children in the Czech Republic. The European Court of Human Rights has recently found the Czech Republic in violation of provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights as a result of the arbitrary remand into state care of children solely as a result of the poverty of their parents,3 an apparently frequent practice in the Czech Republic.

On 31 March 2006, an amendment to the Civil Code took effect that radically changed the rental housing regime through Law No. 107/2006 Coll., “on the unilateral increase of rent on flats” and an amendment to Law No. 40/1964 Civil Code. Law 107/2006 authorises landlords to evict tenants without court approval under certain circumstances, opening the way for racial prejudice and/or other arbitrary considerations to play a heightened role in such decisions. These recent changes to Czech domestic law have not been accompanied by any substantial or substantive public discussion, so those at risk of forced eviction have had little or no opportunity to prepare for this radical change, and all socially disadvantaged families with minor children now face even more serious problems than before.

The March 2006 amendments to Czech domestic law have brought about the deterioration of tenants’ rights. For instance, court approval is no longer necessary for the termination of tenancy agreements in cases where the lessee is viewed to have violated the “good morals” or “good comportment” of the house following written warning; if the lessee is alleged to have grossly violated lease obligations; or if the lessee fails to pay three times the monthly rental or associated costs in advance, or fails to replenish the deposit. The concept of “good comportment” is not adequately defined by law, leaving extensive room for arbitrary treatment of tenants. Previously, unless a formal application for eviction was made to the court more than 30 days prior to a lease expiring, the renewal of fixed-term residential leases was automatic; now, no such formal application must be made and landlords have the automatic right to terminate contracts 2 3

http://www.uzis.cz/download.php?ctg=20&search_name=kojeneck&region=100&kind=21&mnu_id=6200

See European Court of Human Rights, Judgment, Case of Wallová and Walla v. the Czech Republic (application no. 23848/04), case of 26 October 2006.

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once the lease expires. The transfer of lease agreements to the family of the lessee is no longer automatic for persons entering a shared household after 31 March 2006: The lessee’s children, siblings, parents and sons- and daughter-in-laws must prove that they resided with the lessee on the day of his death or permanent abandonment of the household and that they do not have their own residence (for grandchildren, they must prove three years of continuous residence); unmarried partners who moved in after the lease agreement was signed must prove they do not have another residence and the lessee must enter into a written agreement with the lessor.

Tenants are required to inform landlords in writing of any changes in the number of persons residing in a rented flat and to provide information on the name, surname, birth date, and citizenship of those persons, a measure arguably infringing the privacy of the persons concerned beyond what is allowed under international law, including under ICCPR Article 17.4 This policy raises questions concerning discrimination against noncitizens, an issue of recent CERD attention, as it is not clear of what relevance a tenant’s citizenship might be, other than potentially to discriminate against him or her.5 These measures also fall disproportionately against Roma in the Czech Republic, a significant number of which are Slovak citizens.6 Failure to provide this information within one month of the change occurring can be considered a gross violation sufficient for the landlord to evict the tenant without a court order.

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“1. No one shall be subject to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home, or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks to his honour and his reputation. 2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”

5 See CERD General Recommendation No. 30, Discrimination Against Non Citizens, 01/10/2004: “I.4.

Under the Convention, differential treatment based on citizenship or immigration status will constitute discrimination if the criteria for such differentiation, judged in the light of the objectives and purposes of the Convention, are not applied pursuant to a legitimate aim, and are not proportional to the achievement of this aim. Differentiation within the scope of article 1, paragraph 4, of the Convention relating to special measures is not considered discriminatory.”; “VII. Economic, social and cultural rights 29. Remove obstacles that prevent the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights by non-citizens, notably in the areas of education, housing, employment and health….32. Guarantee the equal enjoyment of the right to adequate housing for citizens and non-citizens, especially by avoiding segregation in housing and ensuring that housing agencies refrain from engaging in discriminatory practices.”

6 Following the changes of 1989, the federations of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union dissolved. This generated many stateless persons, among them many Roma, as successor states refused to recognise certain categories of persons as citizens. The Czech Republic designed the 1992 Act on Citizenship, adopted in the context of the break-up of the Czechoslovak state on 1 January 1993, to include provisions aimed at forcing Roma in the Czech Republic to go to Slovakia or otherwise excluding Roma from the polity. Sufficient international and domestic civil society pressure was brought upon the Czech government that it amended the citizenship law in 1999. Nevertheless, certain categories of persons – including anyone who left the country between 1993 and 1999 – remain excluded from access to citizenship other than via naturalisation procedures. This includes people who traveled to Slovakia for medical treatment or to give birth among relatives because they either had no access to any citizenship or only to Slovak citizenship. The Czech government has never undertaken any study of the situation of persons forced to become ‘Slovaks’ as a result of the 1993 citizenship law and their current situation. No policy exists to address these problems, and no remedies have ever been provided to persons arbitrarily excluded from the polity as a result of the 1992 Act on Citizenship.

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Prior to the enactment of these laws, courts could rule in cases of families with minor children that a landlord was obliged to provide an evicted tenant with alternate accommodation or even an alternate flat (not just temporary shelter). Under Law 107/2006, a court can only reach such a verdict if the tenant files a motion to have the eviction reversed within 60 days of the eviction notice.

Municipal and private landlords take advantage of Romani tenants’ limited legal awareness. According to Czech law, once municipal property is transferred to a private owner, the terms of any existing leases remain in effect. In practice, however, new private owners present new leases to the tenants, raise rents, and evict Romani tenants who are unable to pay. New private landlords frequently demand the new leases be signed without allowing the tenants to consult lawyers, and municipalities do not instruct the tenants about their right not to sign the new lease. Open-ended leases are also frequently changed to fixed-term leases without the tenants’ clear knowledge or informed consent. This tactic is used by property owners – including municipal property owners – to disenfranchise the Romani community.

Once a private landlord purchases rental property from a municipality, Romani tenants in the building are frequently evicted into substandard conditions. In some cases, municipalities have sold buildings to private parties apparently specifically for the purpose of evicting Roma.

Anti-Romani sentiment is common in many localities in the Czech Republic, and often promoted, intensified or inflamed by public authorities. In one recent case, on 10 July 2007, the Czech League against Anti-Semitism released an audio tape of racist comments against the Roma made by Czech Senator Liana Janackova, who is also mayor of the Marianske Hory district of the city of Ostrava. The recorded comments were: "I have nowhere to settle them [the Roma]. I understand that this is simply unjust towards you [the non-Romani neighbours], but otherwise I'd really have to take a piece of dynamite and blast them away”. Following the release of the audio recording to the TV news network in Ostrava on 10 July 2007, the website of the Romea civic association, www.romea.cz, then released the following further comments from the recorded speech

by Senator Janackova: "I disagree with any kind of integration. I am a racist, unfortunately. I disagree with the integration of Gypsies and with their settlement throughout the [Marianske Hory] district. Unfortunately, we've chosen the Bedriska locality, that is why they will be there, with a high fence, an electric one, for all I care -I'll tell the whole world that if I have to." Senator Janackova later denied having presented herself as a racist, saying the affair had been manipulated. Janackova had been embroiled in a similar controversy in 1997, when, in the context of devastating floods in Ostrava, she publicly offered Roma one-way airplane tickets to Canada in exchange for their abrogating their rental contracts.

Recent years have been marked by a number of efforts by local authorities to remove Roma en masse from their towns. These efforts have frequently been successful. For example, in the Northern Moravian town of Bohumin, Mayor (and now Senator) Petr Vicha announced in February 2005 that the city would purchase a hostel occupied

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primarily by Romani tenants with the intention of moving them elsewhere and renovating the property. When the tenants protested, Mayor Vicha collectively maligned them in the city’s newsletter and in other press, calling them all rent defaulters, even though this was without basis in fact. There was also a march by vigilante racist skinheads targeting the housing in spring 2005. In June, the occupants received a letter from the city ordering them to leave, which most of them did. Four families who had fastidiously paid their rent and utilities filed lawsuits against the eviction, obtained a preliminary injunction against it, and refused to leave. The injunction specified that the city was obligated to maintain certain utilities in operation for the duration of the injunction. In July 2005, the city filed a counter-claim for the eviction of these remaining tenants, which was granted.

The remaining Romani tenants appealed the evictions; following the filing of their appeal, the city took punitive actions against them. Their mail was reportedly not properly delivered to them. On 25 July 2005, the city discontinued the provision of water to the building. City officials also recommended alternate accommodation to the tenants that would have required the parents to separate, thereby advocating infringements of guaranteed rights to private and family life, as well placing the children at risk of being taken into state custody; or that was beyond their means. The city also hired a private security company to block visits to the hostel, including visits by immediate family members. The residents were then billed for the security company’s services. The monthly rent previously charged per flat was now charged per resident, i.e., if a sixmember family lived in one flat, their rent increased six-fold. The families were thus forced into debt and rendered ineligible for the city’s housing lottery. The debts are in the Czech Crown equivalent of thousands of Euro, and the court issued payment orders for the amount within four days of the city filing suit. Objections were filed against the orders to pay, but hearings on those petitions were indefinitely delayed.

Despite a visit by then-Czech Human Rights Commissioner Svatopluk Karasek and international and local human rights observers to the hostel in October 2005, the city continued to harass inhabitants of the hostel by disconnecting heat to the units. The concerned families filed two motions to have the original preliminary injunction enforced while waiting for their appeal of the eviction to be heard. Despite the fact that during the winter months of 2005-2006 exterior temperatures reached as low as 26 degrees below zero Celsius, the heat to the housing units was never reconnected.

Gradually, the families left the property and turned in their keys. The Scukas left as of 27 January 2006, the Mayers as of 8 February 2006, and the Michls and Tichaneks as of 24 February 2006. They were assisted by financial aid from the non-profit sector. Some of the families moved into another residential hotel in Bohumin. One six-member family is currently living in a 20 m2 room, sharing a bathroom and kitchen with other families.

The city’s social public housing and child welfare sections have failed to meet their obligations with respect to these families.

Close to three years after it was first begun, the campaign by the city of Bohumin to evict Roma from low-cost housing can be seen to have been an unmitigated success by the municipality. Several hundred persons were harassed into leaving the facility almost

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immediately, even though the city made no provision for alternate housing. Those families who stayed and resisted were ultimately also forced to leave with only inadequate attention given to their housing needs. The intervention by courts, domestic and international human rights NGOs, and institutions such as the office of the Czech Ombudsman ultimately proved ineffective to check the engaged ill will of the public authority in Bohumin.

In another very high profile case, in the East Moravian town of Vsetin, near the city of Zlin in the Zlin region, local authorities planned and subsequently implemented the forced expulsion of a group of Roma from their housing in a city-owned property in the town centre in late 2006. Some were expelled to housing in the Poschla quarter on the edge of Vsetin, thereby creating a de facto racially segregated housing estate, and some were evicted to extremely substandard housing in an entirely other administrative region.

A summary of the expulsion proceeding is as follows: In August 2004, the Vsetin municipality’s plan to move the residents of the property concerned wholesale was criticized by then-Human Rights Commissioner Jan Jarab, who told the press: “We have to prevent the creation of a real socio-economic ghetto with all the concomitant phenomena (unemployment, etc.).” In explaining the reasoning behind the plan, Vsetin Mayor Jiri Cunek stated that there was a need to build flats in isolated places for what he termed “inadaptable Roma” so they would not come into contact with the “adaptable” (and/or non-Roma) residents. The Mayor was quoted as saying “we have to separate those who are inadaptable so they do not bother decent citizens.” The term “inadaptable” is widely understood as synonymous with “Gypsy” in the Czech Republic.

In October 2006, the city completed the installation of buildings comprised of metal containers in the Poschla quarter on the outskirts of the town, into which officials intended to move the Romani residents of the building slated for demolition in the centre, which housed 42 families. The new buildings provided 36 flats in total. The town had designed the buildings, according to the media, “especially for inadaptable citizens.” On October 5, 2006, the municipality of Vsetin then held a grand opening for the “new Roma ghetto”, as it was referred to in the media, which more than 40 municipal representatives from towns all over the Czech Republic attended, praising the project to the press as a model one. Vsetin Mayor Cunek told the media these flats would be assigned to those former residents of the building slated for demolition who met their “civic obligations” by paying their rent regularly. The tenants received month-to-month contracts and the mayor reportedly stated that anyone with whom the contract had to be terminated would be immediately put out in the street. Tenants of the new units quickly learned that all the heating in the buildings ran on electricity and that they were being charged the highest possible rate.

On 13 October 2006, the Vsetin municipality then had those Romani families deemed “problematic” transported into the Olomouc Region in the middle of the night to occupy derelict agricultural properties for which the evictees had been manipulated into assuming loans. On the morning of the same day, energy was reportedly cut off to all of the flats of the property being vacated in Vsetin, making it impossible for the families to

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prepare food. Afterwards, men, women and children were allegedly separated during the transportation to their alternative housing; children, accompanied by men, were separated from their mothers. They had not eaten when they started the journey as there had been no chance to cook anything. All of the persons concerned reported being hungry during the journey that followed.

Some of the families were expelled to places as far as 230 kilometres from Vsetin.

Mayor Cunek claimed the families had “reached an agreement with the town of Vsetin”, which had purchased properties in isolated areas throughout the neighbouring Olomouc region and was reselling them – sight unseen – to the “problematic” families, who were also loaned the money for purchasing these properties by the town of Vsetin. The families were deposited in front of various dilapidated buildings in isolated areas, some of which were actually barns or stables. Olomouc regional officials were not notified that these families would be placed in these out-of-the-way locales. Some of the original owners of the properties told the media that the buildings were not fit for human habitation and that they would never have agreed to the sale had they known the purchaser’s intentions. A total of approximately 100 persons were forcibly expelled from the Zlin region in this way. Most of the persons expelled from Vsetin ended up in extremely substandard or otherwise tenuous housing arrangements in remote or deserted parts of the Jeseniky area of northern Czech Republic. The region already suffers high unemployment, so the placement of 100 more people in the area put an even greater strain on regional resources.

Mr Kandra, Mr Kandrač and Mr Ščuka of Vsetin had all previously written letters to the Ombudsman, the President, and the Christian Democratic Party drawing attention to the intentions and direction of the long-term policy of the Vsetin municipality towards the local Roma. A number of civil society organisations hold that these individuals and their families were the prime targets of the Vsetin municipal authority’s actions due to their political activity; their protests may have led then-mayor Čunek and other city officials to have considered them among “the most problematic” residents. After the expulsion described above, a Romani NGO sent an open letter to the Government Council for Roma Community Affairs criticizing social workers employed by the city of Vsetin with Council funding for their role in telling the families that, should the parents refuse to sign the purchase agreements for the properties and assume the loans, the outcome would be that their children would be remanded into state care.

On 13 June 2007, Otakar Motejl, the Public Defender of Rights (the Ombudsman), released his final statement on the forced evictions of Roma from the town of Vsetin, stating that the solution applied by the town definitely did not solve the problems faced by the Roma community and by many families threatened with social exclusion.7 The Ombudsman does not consider the container housing in the Poschla district on the town outskirts suitable for permanent residence, emphasising that there are high levels of 7

Ombudsman, “Final Statement”, available at: http://www.ochrance.cz/dokumenty/document.php?doc=798.

The English translation of the final statement was released on 6th September, 2007. The full version is available at: http://www.ochrance.cz/dokumenty/document.php?doc=798.

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humidity and mould in the dwellings into which some of the families were moved. The Ombudsman also sharply condemned the resettlement of some of the Vsetin evictees elsewhere in Moravia, holding that “it is not possible to accept the export of Roma families from towns and villages where they have lived for a long time as a constructive and effective solution.”8 The Ombudsman has also stated that a similar approach to evicting Roma is being applied by other municipalities throughout the country. “The fact that such an approach is spreading cannot serve as a reason to justify the practice.” On 10 July 2007, Czech senators endorsed the Ombudsman's stand on the deportation of Roma outside the Zlin region.9 However, despite a number of ongoing legal proceedings, the evictions have neither been reversed nor remedied by Czech authorities. Indeed, some public officials have lauded them as a possible model for future action.10 These issues are not new in the Czech Republic and have been raised repeatedly at international level since 1989. For example, in 2003, the Czech Republic entered a friendly settlement with a number of Roma which authorities in the northern Czech town of Ústí nad Labem had expelled not only from their housing, but indeed from the Czech Republic entirely.11 The Czech Republic agreed to pay circa 30,000 EUR in damages to the victims.

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The container flats in the Poschla district are situated next to a sewage plant on a site which was previously a waste dump with polluted land. Before the container flats were constructed using a state subsidy, some Roma had lived at that same location in so-called holobyty (empty flats without services/amenities designed for rent defaulters). Due to the level of pollution, the hygienic authority initially refused to issue a permit for construction of the container flats. After removing the top layers of soil polluted with toxic substances, which required considerable investment, the municipality eventually managed to meet the criteria set by the hygienic authority in order to construct the container flats.

However, it can be assumed that some of the toxic substances have remained in those layers of soil which were not removed, therefore endangering the inhabitants. A report by Masaryk University (see below) suggests that a subsequent examination of the surface layer of soil confirmed an overall occurrence of arsenic and benzoapyrene pollution exceeding the toxicological limits defined as habitable by several times.

9 Ibid.

10 For example, on 29 February 2008 the Czech Press Agency and Internet information-provider Romea.cz reported that Czech MP and President of the Czech Tenants’ Association Mr. Stanislav Krecek, speaking at an event on social housing, stated that the eviction of Romani families from Vsetin represented one option for solving the problem of mass rent defaulting and interethnic relations. In his view, failure to resolve the problems associated with rent defaulters could lead to the “radicalisation” of communities. Mr. Krecek also reportedly stated that communities might arrive at radical solutions in the form of “civic self-help”. Roma civil society organisations criticised Krecek’s remarks as inflammatory.

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European Court of Human Rights, Červeňáková and Others v. Czech Republic (application no.

40226/98), decision of 29 July 2003. in February 1993 the police had gone into their flats and emptied them of their contents. They were told that as a result of the division of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic they were required to return to Slovakia, where they would obtain housing, work and welfare benefits.

They were then loaded into trains and sent to Slovakia, where they lived roofless for circa one month before returning to Ústí nad Labem, where they lived in degrading circumstances in a park, and later in a garage.

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Failure to Implement CERD Committee Recommendations As the CERD Committee has repeatedly noted, these matters are not isolated in the Czech Republic, but rather fall against a backdrop of systemic racial discrimination against Roma. In its Concluding Observations of 11 April 2007, the Committee “reiterate[d] its concern about information according to which Roma people are particularly vulnerable to evictions and segregation in housing, and regrets that the State party has not taken sufficient action to tackle this issue. While noting the undertaking of the State party to support the construction of subsidised flats by municipalities, the Committee is concerned that the autonomy of municipalities under domestic law is described by the State party as an obstacle to the fulfilment of its obligations to ensure the enjoyment of the right to housing by all without discrimination, in particular at the local level. It is further concerned that domestic regulations do not clearly prohibit racial discrimination in the enjoyment of the right to housing. (Articles 2, 3 and 5 (e)(iii)).”

In its April 2007 Concluding Observations, the Committee went on to “remind[] the State party that it may not invoke the provisions of its internal law as a justification for its failure to implement the Convention, and urges the State party to adopt all steps necessary to ensure the right to housing to all without discrimination, whether direct or indirect, based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin, including in particular at the local level. The State party should ensure that domestic legislation clearly prohibits racial discrimination in the enjoyment of the right to housing, and protects vulnerable persons, including Roma, from evictions. In particular, such legislation should include measures providing the greatest possible security for tenants and strictly enumerate the circumstances under which evictions may be carried out.” The current events in Novy Jicin indicate that this recommendation has yet to be acted upon by the Czech authorities.

In addition, the Committee noted with concern in April 2007 that “despite efforts to that end, the State party has still not adopted a general anti-discrimination law guaranteeing the right to equal treatment and protection against discrimination. (Articles 1, 2 and 5)”.

It went on to recommend “again that the State party adopt legislation providing for the prohibition of discrimination based on colour, race, descent, national or ethnic origin, as defined in article 1 of the Convention, as a general principle applicable in the political, economic, social and cultural spheres or any other field of public life.” Despite the elapse of close to a year since these recommendations were made, the Czech Republic still lacks a general anti-discrimination law.

In addition to the matters described above in Novy Jicin, the NGOs party to this communication have documented forced evictions and related extreme human rights harms and/or ongoing threats of forced eviction against Roma, undertaken by private individuals and state actors or combinations thereof in Bohumin and Vsetin (as noted above), as well as Plzen, Nove Dvory-Ovcary, Brno, Liberec, Litvinov, and Havlickuv Brod during the period of 2005-2007. Patterns and practices of racial segregation are intensifying in a number of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, including the capital Prague, at least in part as a result of an unchecked wave of forced evictions of Roma in municipalities throughout the Czech Republic in recent years. Municipal authorities have

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displaced Roma from integrated residential housing to isolated locations without adequate sanitation, utilities, accessible schools or other services necessary for life with dignity. Further, recently-adopted domestic housing laws allow municipal and private landlords and others to arbitrarily invade the privacy of any tenant. Roma are routinely subjected to invasive actions by landlords. In the face of forced evictions, harassment, and other grave human rights abuses, Czech authorities have failed to undertake adequate measures to protect Roma families.

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Relevance of Ongoing Events in Novy Jicin for CERD Early Warning and Urgent Action Proceedings The current housing situation for several Roma families in Novy Jicin, Czech Republic meets the following criteria of CERD Early Warning and Urgent Action concerns: 1) There is a significant, persistent pattern of racial discrimination against the Roma, as evidenced inter alia by social and economic indicators, acts by public officials and private individuals, and persistently high levels of racial antipathy registering in public opinion polls throughout the Czech Republic in general, and in Novy Jicin in particular; 2) Members of the Roma community in Novy Jicin currently facing forced eviction and homelessness are de facto being excluded from economic and social life; 3) There is a general lack of an adequate legislative framework defining and criminalizing all forms of racial discrimination, a lack of effective mechanisms to prevent such discrimination, and existing recourse procedures are proving inadequate. In addition, (i) the legal framework in the Czech Republic securing protection against arbitrary forced eviction is close to non-existent; (ii) there are no effective laws banning discrimination – including racial discrimination in the field of housing; (iii) there is similarly no effective legal mechanism existing under domestic law to ensure that no racial discrimination occurs in the course of proceedings to remove persons from housing.

As such they conform to a number of the indicators established by the Committee in its 2008 “Guidelines for Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedure�.

We urge the Committee to undertake all actions within its competences to assist the State Party in ending the threat of forced eviction against the Roma concerned in Novy Jicin.

Thank you in advance for your efforts in this regard.

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Sincerely,

Claude Cahn Head of Advocacy Unit Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions

Gwendolyn Albert Director, Women’s Initiatives Network Peacework Development Fund