ERRC Letter to Czech President Vaclav Havel
Date: Sat, 24 Jan 98 13:52:16 -0500
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: ERRC Letter to Czech President Vaclav Havel
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Original sender: Claude Cahn <[email protected]>
ERRC Letter to Czech President Vaclav Havel
On January 19, the European Roma Rights Center, an international public
interest law organisation which monitors the situation of Roma in Europe and
provides legal defence in cases of human rights abuse, sent a letter to
Czech President Vaclav Havel, appealing to him to exercise his
constitutional power to annul the expulsion orders of all former citizens of
the Czechoslovak federation who were sentenced to the penalty of expulsion
prior to and including December 31, 1997. The text of the letter is as
follows:
January 19, 1998
President Vaclav Havel
Kancelar prezidenta republiky
fax +420 2 24 31 0007
cc: JUDr. Jana Chalupova
Kancelar prezidenta republiky
fax +420 2 24 31 0007
Dear Mr. President,
The European Roma Rights Center (ERRC), an international public interest law
organisation which monitors the rights of Roma and provides legal defence in
cases of human rights abuse, appeals to you to exercise your constitutional
power to annul the expulsion orders of all former citizens of the
Czechoslovak federation who were sentenced to the penalty of expulsion prior
to and including December 31, 1997.
Until it was amended, Article 57 of the Czech Criminal Code provided the
penalty of expulsion, undifferentiated in degree; all expulsion penalties
issued by courts were permanent, i.e., for life. In September 1997, the
Czech Parliament recognised the injustice of the lifetime expulsion and
amended Article 57 to provide for differentiated penalties according to the
severity of the crime and the ties of the offender to the Czech Republic.
The amended article entered into force on January 1, 1998.
According to information provided by the Ministry of Justice, between 1993
and the first half of 1997, the expulsion penalty was imposed on 3,083
foreigners, of whom 851 were Slovak citizens, i.e. former citizens of the
Czechoslovak federation. The perverse effect of the widely criticised Czech
citizenship law has been to facilitate the expulsion of many persons with
strong ties to the Czech Republic. For people who did not become foreigners
by crossing a border but by the split of a country, the expulsion sentence
can mean life-long separation from close relatives, places of employment and
social and cultural home. An undetermined although purportedly sizable
majority of those Slovaks expelled were individuals who had either been born
or had lived considerable periods of their lives in the Czech Republic. The
ties of these individuals to the new Czech state were genuine and their ties
to the Slovak Republic were often, at best, attenuated. In many instances,
courts permanently expelled individuals who had family and children living
in the Czech Republic, effectively violating Article 8 of the European
Convention on Human Rights. In one famous example, before his case was
overturned by the Supreme Court, a Romani man was sentenced to life
expulsion for stealing a nearly valueless quantity of sugar beets from a
field belonging to a farm near his home. Indeed, there are strong
indications that the expulsion penalty was disproportionately applied when
sentencing Roma.
Honourable Mr. President, the ERRC welcomed your recent strong condemnations
of racism in the Czech Republic. We now appeal to you to act within the
powers of your office and reverse some of Czech citizenship law's negative
consequences by annulling the expulsion orders of all Slovak citizens
sentenced to life expulsion following the division of the state.
Sincerely,
Dimitrina Petrova
Executive Director
________________________________________
European Roma Rights Center
P.O.Box 10/24 - 1525 Budapest 114 - Hungary
Phone: + (36 1) 327-98-77 Fax: + (36-1) 138-37-27
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