October 24: Some one million of them perished in Nazi concentration camps, but there are no memorials to them. Romany gypsies in Europe, who survived Hitler's final solution, and their descendants continue to suffer from the prejudices that have pursued them over time. They are Europe's invisible problem that no one wants to know about or wants to deal with. There are about 12 million gypsies in the world and almost every European country has a gypsy presence, and a history of discriminating against them.Gypsies are in the news again because several hundred of them have arrived in Britain seeking political asylum. In the last few weeks, anywhere between 200 and 700 gypsies have arrived at the British port of Dover. Although several families have already left, their application having been turned down, the gypsies cannot expect a warm welcome. The local Council has gone public over the cost of supporting asylum seekers and newspapers are speculating that as many as 3000 gypsies could arrive in the following few weeks. This has set the mood in the town firmly against the new arrivals. Hoteliers are refusing to take them in and, ``they are not genuine asylum seekers,'' or ``the English pay for everything - they get nothing themselves'' is the general view.Claude Moraes of the Joint Council for the Welfare of immigrants said: ``There is an instinctive reaction just because they are gypsies. They really hate them. It seems to be some kind of combination of gypsies - whom everybody thinks they know - and the garden of England being violated. It is vile stuff.'' The perceived problem of gypsy asylum seekers is clearly one that the Government wants to nip in the bud. Britain's immigration and asylum minister, Michael O'Brian has appeared on Czech television telling prospective asylum seekers that they are not welcome here and that the ``full force of the law will be brought to bear on those trying to abuse the asylum procedures.''The catalogue of racial and rights abuse against the Romany people is huge. They are the one community that has suffered tremendously because of the collapse of Communism. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia where Romanies number some 400,000 they have been the target of attacks by skin heads, and in the last couple of years there have been several racially motivated murders. The Slovak Government has cut child benefit to Romanies to curb ``reproduction of socially unacceptable people''. Isabel Fonseca, author of Bury Me Standing, a study of gypsy life in Europe says the Czech Republic has introduced draconian laws that in effect disenfranchise gypsies.Unemployment among Romanies in the Czech Republic is anything between 70 per cent and 97 per cent compared to a national rate of just 4 per cent. When Czechoslovakia broke up, the Romanies in the new Czech Republic were declared stateless and deported across the border to Slovakia.While the Government in Prague has tried to distance itself from the prejudice rampant in the country other government officials fuel it. This summer the mayor of Teplice donated his salary to buy air tickets for local Romanies to leave the country. His colleague in Marianske Hory also offered discounted air tickets to gypsies if they vacated their council homes.Both the Czech and Slovak Governments are anxious to stem the tide of refugees which they believe damages their countries' images. They say that the life and liberty of Romany people in the region is not under threat. The Slovak embassy in London has, in fact, said the gypsies have no grounds to claim political asylum. ``This is a case of economic migration to get economic benefits, to get an easy life and not to have to work.'' The Slovakian embassy claims that the influx of gypsies into Britain has been prompted by a documentary broadcast in the Czech Republic last month.The documentary, made by television journalist Josef Klima, for the Czech current-affairs programme, With Your Own Eyes, is the story of one Romany family which left the Czech Republic because of the discrimination and harassment it faced and has made a life for itself in Britain. The documentary makers however say that this a a misreading of the situation. ``People think that it was us who made the Romanies want to leave. But we didn't do it. We just mapped out the situation and presented it to our viewers.''
