Whatever’s Wrong, Deep-Rooted Czech Prejudice Puts Blame on Gypsies : Europe: Human rights officials say that hatred toward continent’s largest ethnic minority is worse than ever. Prague has taken the widespread resentment a step further by attempting to limit citizenship.

From their third-floor apartment overlooking the historic Charles Bridge, Lucie and Libor Koubek watch unsuspecting tourists get swindled out of their vacation money.

It’s the Gypsies, the couple says.

“They boast that they have a better exchange rate than the banks,” said Lucie, a teacher. “Then they give the tourist a stack of bills, and half of them are false. If he protests, more Gypsies come and chase him away.”

Everyone in this newly democratized capital seems to have a Gypsy story--wallets stolen in the subway, music blaring from apartments late at night, extended families living in two or three dirty rooms with no running water or electricity.

It’s always the Gypsies, they say.

Human rights officials say that hatred toward Europe’s largest ethnic minority is worse than ever. Suppressed under communism, racial discrimination in Eastern and Central Europe is now practiced openly, even by educated citizens like the Koubeks, who say they simply want the Gypsies to go away.

The Czech government has taken the widespread resentment against Gypsies a step further by codifying it in a restrictive citizenship law, according to international human rights groups.

The law requires many longtime residents of the Czech Republic to reapply for citizenship. The U.S. State Department and the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe--a U.S. congressional monitoring group better known as the Helsinki Commission--decry the statute as unconstitutional.

Enacted after Czechoslovakia split up in 1993, the citizenship law requires applicants to prove that they have lived in the Czech Republic for at least two years, and that they have not been convicted of a crime in the last five years.

In contrast, neighboring Slovakia considers all citizens of the former Czechoslovakia eligible for Slovak citizenship.

Human rights groups say the Czech law targets Gypsies, many of whom are officially considered Slovak citizens, but who have lived in the Czech Republic for decades.

About 100,000 Gypsies have been denied Czech citizenship since the law’s passage, according to the Tolerance Foundation, a human rights organization in Prague. Those without citizenship are unable to vote, run for office or receive full social benefits.

“It’s institutionalized racism,” said Bella Edginton, a social worker with another Prague group, the Citizen’s Movement for Solidarity and Tolerance. “They are turning away people who were born in this country and who never considered themselves anything but Czech.”

Government estimates of citizenship denials are far lower. Officials argue that the law isn’t discriminatory because it applies to everyone who lives in the Czech Republic, not only Gypsies.

“The problems are exaggerated,” said Ladislav Goral, a senior member of the government’s Council on Nationalities. For the first time in Czech history, he says, government officials and Gypsy rights leaders are meeting regularly to discuss issues of mutual concern.

Goral, himself a Gypsy, says that Gypsies without Czech citizenship are free to apply for citizenship in Slovakia.

But many Gypsies don’t want to move to Slovakia, human rights officials say. Conditions there are poorer and work is harder to find than in the Czech Republic.

Gypsies from Slovakia began arriving in Czechoslovakia after World War II, when the government needed workers to fill an unskilled-labor shortage after thousands of Czech Gypsies perished in Nazi concentration camps.

Today, government officials estimate that 150,000 Gypsies live in the Czech Republic, whose population is more than 10 million. Gypsy leaders say the number is at least three times higher.

Whatever the figure, everyone seems to agree that Roma, as Gypsies call themselves, continue to live along the edges of society at all levels, public and private.

Their reluctance to assimilate contributes to the negative attitude toward them, said Vaclav Trojan, a member of the Helsinki Citizen’s Assembly in Prague.

“All Gypsies are stereotyped as thieves and nomads and fortunetellers,” he said. “It is not just racism behind this. It’s a problem of the coexistence of two completely different cultural systems in one society.”

Many Gypsies still cling to the rigorously structured culture they brought to Europe from Northern India more than six centuries ago. They often reject Western culture, speaking their own language and referring to all non-Gypsies as “gadjo.”

“Their state of isolation and reluctance to join in common matters contributes to the discrimination,” said Karel Holomek, a Czech Gypsy leader from Brno. But, he added, “They have a lot of reason for it.”

The unemployment rate for Gypsies is 60% to 70%, Holomek said, compared with 3% for the rest of the Czech population.

According to a recent survey sponsored by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 78% of Czech citizens favor stricter punishment for Gypsies who commit crimes.

The citizenship law only serves to strengthen such resentment, said Emil Scuka, head of the Roma Civic Initiative, one of several Gypsy rights groups launched in the country since 1989.

“The law says, ‘These people are the best and these people are the worst,’ ” Scuka said.

Police and skinheads in neighboring countries with large Gypsy populations--including Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary--have been criticized recently for acts of discrimination against Gypsies.

But the Czech Republic is often praised for its overall human rights record and its political stability--one reason the international community finds the country’s treatment of Gypsies so troubling.

“If a discriminatory law like this one is left to stand, then what hope is there for other countries in this region?” asked Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), chairman of the Helsinki Commission. “This law may very well signal the kinds of human-rights problems that will typify the post-Communist era in Europe.”

Even with international attention and ongoing meetings between Gypsy and government officials in Prague, few experts believe the Czech citizenship law to be softened.

“The government and the Czech people,” said Scuka, “want the problem of the Roma to go to sleep.”