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Standoff

Racial tensions run high in Litvínov as far-right radicals clash with police

By Markéta Hulpachová
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
November 19th, 2008 issue

ČTK

Police fired tear gas to prevent rioting right-wing extremists from entering Janov, a predominantly Roma part of Litvínov, Nov. 17.

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST

The Workers Party, a far-right nonparliamentary organization, was initially invited to Litvínov by a group of citizen representatives who are unhappy with the "Roma situation."

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST

Around 200 Roma kept watch in Janov, many with anti-racist signs.

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST

Meanwhile, Workers Party Chairman Tomáš Vandas spouted populist rhetoric.

On the 19th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, the town of Litvínov braced itself for one of the most intense riots the country has seen in a decade.

Around 600 right-wing extremists and 1,000 police officers congregated Nov. 17 in the north Bohemian town of 27,000 for what organizers deemed a “peaceful demonstration.” Initiated by the far-right Workers Party (DS) and supported by a handful of similar-minded organizations, the gathering’s official purpose was to protest the local government’s inability to “solve the Roma problem” in Janov, a panel housing development on the town’s outskirts.

The ensuing violence has been called the toughest clash between police and protesters since the 2000 World Bank Summit.

Boisterous throngs of black-clad radicals arrived in Litvínov’s quaint center throughout the morning hours, chanting racist war cries and openly emulating the gestures of their Nazi role models. A single-car regional train deposited them at the train station, where they were immediately searched by police. The stockpile of weapons confiscated from the extremists included a wooden club with protruding nails, several knives and a revolver; machetes and pitchforks highlighted the confiscated arsenal of the local Roma.

Determined to break through the police barricade around Janov, where around 200 Roma residents kept watch, the extremists hurled loose cobblestones and Molotov cocktails at armed officers, who employed tear gas and pyrotechnic devices to disperse the riot.

The end of the day left seven police officers and seven demonstrators severely injured, 15 people detained and one police vehicle in flames. Despite these casualties, the police effort proved successful: As officers on horseback scattered the last handful of ski-masked rioters, the Roma vigil in Janov remained undisturbed.

“I’ve called off the demonstration,” Radek Grundza, who represents the Roma community in Janov, said on the evening after the riots. “This time, the police fulfilled their duty. We’re going home to nurse our tired feet.”

One of the main organizers behind the Roma demonstrations against the latest extremist march, Grundza — whom the Roma in Janov call “the boss” — recalls a recent incident during which police were less successful in preventing an armed clash between right-wing radicals and the local minority.

On Oct. 18, an unauthorized rally brought 300 armed disciples of the Workers Party and other right-wing organizations to Litvínov. Unchecked by the seemingly ill-prepared police, the radicals infiltrated the center of Janov, where hundreds of machete and bat-wielding Roma awaited their arrival.

The two factions were mere feet away from each other by the time police managed to separate them, preventing open conflict.

“Our only luck was that the police were behind us. If we had been facing them, heads would have rolled,” said Grundza. “It would have been a civil war of sorts, because when these neo-Nazis were marching through Janov, they had the support of the local ethnic majority. The locals were tossing them cookies and drinks and telling them to go get us.”

While a majority of Litvínov residents stops short of sympathizing with the extremists, the local resentment toward the Roma community in Janov is palpable at every turn. Hundreds of non-Roma residents, including mothers with infants, joined in the recent extremist rallies.

“Janov used to be a good neighborhood,” said Roman Dostál, a local taxi driver. “The apartments there are very nice, but I had to move out after three weeks. You cannot walk through the street without being threatened by a gang of Gypsies. The kids cuss at each other from the balconies at night. It’s impossible to live there.”

In the ghetto

The ubiquitous tension in Janov sprouts from a festering urban issue.

A product of socialist planning, the neighborhood consists of several blocks of shoddy panel buildings formerly intended to house displaced residents whose villages were demolished to make way for brown coal mining in the Most region.

During the 1990s, Litvínov officials rushed into a clumsy privatization during which most town-owned apartments were sold to private owners and real estate companies.

“I disagreed with the privatization of Janov years ago,” Litvínov Deputy Mayor Martin Klika told journalists at a recent board meeting. “As chief of police, I warned the town leadership that Litvínov must maintain control over the social composition of the Janov population.”

With a significant amount of Janov apartments in the hands of large real estate firms, the neighborhood became a dumping ground for low-income families who were unable to afford rents in more lucrative real estate markets.

“The realtors offered the Roma cheaper apartments of equal size to get them to move into a less desirable area,” said Ondřej Cakl, an extremism expert who monitors the situation in Janov. “Many of them were not paying rent, but some rent-payers were coaxed into relocating simply because they were Roma and were thought to bring down the property value of wherever they were living.”

The resulting influx of what town officials call “problematic families” has had a devastating effect on the neighborhood. Derelict buildings have been rendered uninhabitable. Soaring crime rates and incessant resident complaints have compelled police to initiate a nightly neighborhood watch.

In short, Janov is quickly morphing into another ghetto — a sequestered enclave of low-income Roma. According to government information, around 300 such places exist throughout the Czech Republic, typically clustered in former industrial areas with high unemployment rates.

“The parts of the country most heavily impacted by the closing of heavy industry that was the economic lifeblood of the totalitarian system still struggle with high unemployment, primarily because not enough new opportunities have been created quickly enough for the particular kind of labor available,” said Gwendolyn Albert, a Roma rights advocate. “Social stratification is occurring rapidly, and is breeding a criminal class, an underclass and resentment.”

In the case of Janov, racial tension is further amplified by a widening divide between the Roma newcomers and the non-Roma natives. Convinced that the town government and police failed to cope with what they called “the Roma problem in Janov,” a group of citizens representing Janov natives at Litvínov Municipal Hall allegedly approached the Workers Party earlier this year.

Seizing an opportunity to garner popular support, the group responded by deploying several vigilantes to the neighborhood Oct. 4. “The citizens of Janov turned to us for help,” said party Chairman Tomáš Vandas. “We sent out an unarmed monitoring group to get Municipal Hall to act, because the things that were going on there, the positive discrimination, are intolerable.”

The Oct. 4 march marked the beginning of the Workers Party’s engagement in Janov, and an end to the party itself. Shortly after the far-right group’s second rally Oct. 18, during which the extremists came dangerously close to armed combat with Roma locals, Interior Minister Ivan Langer submitted to the government a proposal for the party’s dissolution.

With around 29,000 supporters nationwide, Vandas says he is determined to persevere in his political activities despite the imminent ban, although a return to Janov is currently off the agenda.

As the neighborhood recuperates from the recent violence, the local and national government now faces the long-neglected problem of reversing Janov’s deterioration into a segregated ghetto.

Asked whether he was optimistic about the outcome of these efforts, Grundza, a local Roma, smiled and shook his head. “It will not move forward,” he said. “Everybody is blabbering about it right now because of what happened here, but it will be forgotten soon, just as we’ve been forgotten for the past 19 years.”

Markéta Hulpachová can be reached at mhulpachova@praguepost.com

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