[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 110 (Friday, July 30, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1686-E1687]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               AMENDMENT TO CZECH CITIZENSHIP LAW PRAISED

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. STENY H. HOYER

                              of maryland

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 29, 1999

  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address an issue I have 
raised in this Chamber many times before: the Czech citizenship law. 
For 5 years, as a member of the Helsinki Commission, I have argued that 
the law adopted when the Czechoslovak Federal Republic dissolved, on 
January 1, 1993, was designed to and had the effect of leaving tens of 
thousands of former Czechoslovaks de jure or de facto stateless. I have 
argued, and as Czech officials eventually admitted, all of those people 
were members of the Romani minority. And I have argued that to have a 
law with such a narrow and discriminatory impact was no accident. Most 
of all, I have argued that this law needed to be changed.
  In 1996, the law was amended in an effort to placate international 
critics of the law, but that amendment was mere window dressing

[[Page E1687]]

and the Czech citizenship law still left tens of thousands of former 
Czechoslovaks stateless, every one a Rom. Moreover, there was an 
important principle at stake: citizenship laws in newly independent 
states which discriminate against permanent residents who were citizens 
of the former state on the basis of race, language, religion or 
ethnicity are not compatible with international norms. That failure to 
uphold this principle in the Czech Republic could have critical 
reverberations in every former Soviet Republic and, more to the point, 
every former Yugoslav Republic.
  Many people working on this issue believed that the 1996 amendment 
was all that was politically possibly; that we would simply have to 
resign ourselves to a generation of stateless Roma. The leadership of 
the Helsinki Commission, including the current Chairman, Congressman 
Chris Smith, held our ground and insisted that the Czech law should be 
amended again, to bring it into line with international norms.
  Meanwhile, throughout this first post-Communist decade, the number of 
violent attacks against Roma climbed, year after year. By the fall of 
1997, some 2000 Czech Roma had requested asylum in Canada. By 1998, 
NGO's reported that there had been more than 40 racially motivated 
murders in the Czech Republic since 1990, more than the number of 
racially motivated murders in Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovakia 
combined--countries with much larger Romani populations. Midway through 
1998, the city of Usti nad Labem announced plans to build a wall to 
segregate Romani residents from ethnic Czechs--a ghetto in the heart of 
Europe.
  Fortunately, the Czech Government elected last year appears to take 
the human rights violation of Czech Roma much more seriously. Early 
after taking office, Deputy Prime Minister Pavel Rychetsky announced 
that amending the Czech citizenship law would be a priority for his 
government. Acting on that commitment, the Chamber of Deputies adopted 
an amendment on July 9 that will enable thousands of Roma to apply for 
citizenship.
  This amendment must still be passed by the Czech Senate and signed 
into law by President Havel--both steps are expected to take place this 
year. More critically, it will be necessary to ensure that there is an 
active campaign to reach all those who have been denied citizenship, to 
make sure this right is fully exercised. But for now, the Czech Chamber 
of Deputies has upheld an important principle and, even more 
importantly, upheld the rights of the Romani minority.

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