This letter is addressed to all Radicals, and above all to Radical parliamentarians.

FOREWORD

The struggle against the Law on Citizenship of the Czech Republic was started by Radicals working in Prague in June, 1993. After thorough legal analysis, J.Jarab and P.Horak produced in August, 1993 the following proposal, which was then represented in parliamentary debate by several deputies (although no Czech MPs are currently members of the Radical Party, some have accepted the Radical proposal as the basis for their activity on this matter). We find it useful, therefore, to quote once again this proposal in full length - especially as the solution it suggests is still the best possible option in our view.

1.

PROPOSAl for an AMENDMENT to the LAW ON CZECH CITIZENSHIP by Jan Jarab and Petr Horak

The law 40/1992 (passed by the Czech National Council on December 29, 1992) has, in our opinion, the following serious shortcomings:

(1) It accepts the definition of the "citizen of the Czech Republic" from the 24-year-old Federal law 165/1968, which was further developed by the Czech National Council in the law 39/1969; both of these laws concern the matter of citizenship of the republics. By accepting this definition, however, the current law reduces the citizen to a passive object of the authorities' decisions; the authorities grant various rights to its citizens at will (or refuse to do so), according to arbitrary criteria such as the citizen's birthplace or the birthplace of his or her parents. According to the aforementioned laws a person is a Czech citizen if he or she was born on the territory of the Czech Republic and was at least 15 years old on January 1, 1969; younger persons, i.e. those born between Jan.1, 1969 and Dec.31, 1992, received the citizenship which was held by their parents - i.e., of the republic in which the parents were born. Due to this definition, the national principle becomes mixed up with the civic p

rinciple, which should be the basis of citizenship. The often-cited argument that "everyone could have changed his citizenship from one republic to another" is hypocritical; these categories had no practical significance and most citizens were not even aware of their existence. Indeed, the citizenship of each republic was legally irrelevant and identical with the term "nationality" to such a degree that it was not even written in any identification cards or other official documents, where only Czechoslovak citizenship and Czech or Slovak nationality were mentioned.

After the last elections, when the political leaderships decided to split the federation, this category suddenly ceased being legally irrelevant and became crucial. Even from a legal viewpoint such a development is rather dubious; while taking over the definition of a "citizen of the Czech Republic" from the law 165/1968, the current law violates the preceding law on which 165/1968 is based, i.e. the Law on the Czechoslovak Federation (143/1968), which states that the citizen of one republic has equal rights on the territory of the other. The Law on the Czechoslovak Federation also states explicitly that the following law - the one which defines the citizenships of the consituent republics - is intended to specify its own statements. If this basic law is being abolished, however, then the employment of the specifying law, which only defines the "citizen of the Czech Republic" as a category, can be viewed as a selective interpretation of law in general.

(2) The Parliament, which was elected under the name of the "Czech National Council", passed into the new state under the name of the "Assembly of Representatives" - without any conditions and limitations. However, hundreds of thousands of its voters, who were registered in their respective towns of residence, voted for the Parliament and gave it a part of its legimitacy, were disenfranchised and deprived of their citizenship through adecision of that same Parliament and have to apply to receive it again. Moreover, the new law on citizenship actually denies many of these voters the chance to receive it at all. The required 5-year period without an intentional criminal offence, for instance, assures that a 30-year-old person of Slovak origin, who was born in Prague and has received a sentence for a criminal act in the last 5 years, is not eligible for citizenship, while a 30-year-old Czech has this citizenship automatically, without any regard to his penal record.

The law has imposed the status of a citizen of the Slovak Republic (a new independent subject of international law) to people who did not have to spend even a minute of their life on Slovak territory. The absurdity of this situation becomes apparent when we realize that many persons who ran for the last elections to the Czech National Council (including at least one elected deputy) suddenly became non-citizens in the Czech Republic, and that the requirements for becoming a Czech citizen in 1993 are stricter than those for being a candidate for the current Czech Parliament.

Only after the creation of the independent Czech Republic did a new independent subject of international law appear on the scene. At the moment of its birth, however, this subject has formulated retroactive requiremtns for its citizenship which include the birth of a person or even of its parents (in all persons younger than 39 years) on a territory which was not yet independent or even formally existent at the moment of that persons birth.

(3) The acceptance of such a definition of a citizen not only violates the civic principle, puts in doubt the legitimity of our Parliament and conflicts with elementary logic due to the retroactivity of its criteria; it also has some very serious practical results. Among other things, it also puts one entire ethnic group at a disadvantage - the Romanies. As the original Romany community in the Czech Lands perished almost entirely in Nazi concentration camps and most Romanies now living here came from Slovakia (a large proportion of them being forcibly moved here by the Communist authorities in the late 1950's), they suddenly became citizens of the independent Slovak Republic after January 1, 1993. Moreover, many of them fail to meet the requirements for Czech citizenship, although they were born in the Czech Lands and grew up here. If the majority of Romanies fail to receive the Czech citizenship, their social status will be subject to further deterioration, because as "foreign nationals" they will

be even less successful than today in finding employment. In other words, another barrier will be created against their successful integration into this society. The "Romany problem" will not vanish when the Romanies fail to receive Czech citizenship; quite the opposite, the resulting situation will be inherently unstable and it will have to be solved either in a democratic way, i.e. by a belated amendment of the law on citizenship, or in a totalitarian manner, i.e. by deportations to Slovakia. The latter would, of course, have grave results not only on the Czech political scene (a rise in nationalism) but also on the international level; in the eyes of democratic Europe, we would rightly sink to the level of the Yugoslav republics. It is also worth mentioning that during the process of the Czech Republic's admission to the Council of Europe some members voiced concern about the discrimination of Romanies in the Czech Republic.

CONCLUSION: The acceptance of the legal norms of 1969 as a basis for the current citizenship law in the Czech Republic represents a threat to the rule of the civic principle in this country. The most just solution, which would be in accord with the democratic tradition of 1918, would be to give all citizens of the former Czech and Slovak Federal Republic the right to elect whichever citizenship they want.

However, as the results of the vote on the current law from December 1992 indicate, our Parliament seems unwilling to dispose entirely with this heritage of 1969. We propose, therefore, what we believe is a realistic compromise: a law which would give the right of option to all "Slovak citizens" who were permanently resident on the territory of the Czech Republic prior to December 31, 1992. These citizens should become Czech citizens if they declare themselves as such, and they should not have to meet any further requirements.

2.

THE SITUATION 6 MONTHS LATER

The report by independent British lawyer and journalist Tom Gross suggests that our expectations were correct, and possibly even underestimated: tens of thousands of people (at least) are likely to be left without the citizenship of the country where they were born.

For this there are several practical reasons. As the preamble to our August, 1993, proposal says, more than 200 000 of those who became "Slovak citizens" in the moment of the split, although they were living on Czech territory and were registered as voters for the Czech Parliament, are Gypsies (Romanies). Almost the entire Romany population in the Czech Republic came from Slovakia after World War II (the original Czech Romanies were exterminated by Hitler). Therefore, more than 90% of them became Slovak citizens on Jan.1, 1993, although a majority of them had been born in the Czech lands or living here for many decades. This minority has a very low educational level - many are functionally illiterate, and most of the others have only basic education - which makes it very hard for them to manage the process of application. Quite often, indeed, they are not even aware that the law classifies them as Slovak citizens, because they did not declare Slovak nationality in the census. Neither do many of them k

now how their status will change after June 1994 when they suddenly will be treated as foreigners (i.e., subject to deportation if violating rules). Due to higher criminality, many are not even eligible for the citizenship because they were sentenced in the last five years; others do not know whether they are eligible of not because they don't know the law correctly (it is very hard to get a copy of it); still others meet the requirements and know it but are unable to find their own birth certificates, plus those of their parents, to obtain their criminal record and, most important, the "release from Slovak citizenship", which entails the statements that the applicant owes no money to the Slovak state. Slovakia's response to such applications has been sluggish and documents often get lost in Slovakia; in fact, the majority of applicants never received a "release from citizenship" from the Slovak authorities. The citizenship law states that whoever has waited for 3 months for a response from Slovakia is to be

treated as one who has been "released from Slovak citizenship", yet most local authorities require the full Slovak documentation. The Gross Report shows that 30-70 percent of Romanies living in the Czech Republic (and in some regions possibly even more) are likely to be left without Czech citizenship after June 1994 when the term for applying for Czech citizenship expires.

Additional reasons include the fact that people who are in custody, waiting for trial, or in hospital are unable to manage the bureaucratic process. Inmates of mental hospitals, for instance, are not even entitled by law to take such action - will those of them who had Slovak or Romany parents be deported to Slovakia?

Often families will be divided: some members will receive the Czech citizenship, other will fail (for instance because they were sentenced in the last five years).

In any case, the consequences will be dramatic.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

The protests against the law have so far received little coverage in the press; even the parliamentary debate about the matter was hardly reported at all. Even those citizens who read the papers every day have just a very vague knowledge of the law itself, let alone of the struggle against it. The general public is perhaps vaguely extent aware that the law enables the Czech Republic to "get rid of Romanies" (and Slovaks); some 80-90% of the public have a negative view of Romanies, however, so the public opinion is not likely to object to such restrictive measures.

It seems unlikely that Parliament will decide to improve the law without serious foreign pressure; civil rights activists and Romany representatives are a negligible group in lobbying. To prevent possible tragic results, parliamentarians from all around Europe must try to highlight this issue right now. Every distinguished Western politician who comes to deal with Czech authorities should be informed about this matter and ready to bring it up. If the Czech Government finds it could face international embarassment, it can easily influence the conservative majority in Parliament to change the law. However, it has to be motivated to do so.

Many times in the past years the West has shown terrible short-sightedness concerning development in Eastern and Central Europe; it always reacted only to disasters which have been in making for months, and earlier warnings were ignored. The Radical Party's reaction was usually rather quick compared with official institutions. What is going to happen now? Are we, Radicals, with our numerous parliamentarians (and Europarliamentarians), just going to wait for something to happen?

The time to act is now; the Czech Parliament is scheduled to debate the Citizenship Law again in March or April. The text of our APPEAL TO THE PARLIAMENT OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC can, in our view, be used without significant alterations. We hope that it will be taken over by Radical parliamentarians and that the existence of a transnational party will prove useful in this respect. We have resorted to this initiative as a last step after all our efforts to persuade the majority of our deputies have failed. Foreign pressure is today the only way to change this law. What would you think about presenting it in the European Parliament and perhaps stimulating a resolution concerning this matter?

DEAR PARLIAMENTARIANS! PLEASE SIGN THIS APPEAL AND SEND IT TO THE CZECH PARLIAMENT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

The proposed text of the appeal follows.

3.

APPEAL TO THE PARLIAMENT OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC

We, the undersigned members of the ... Parliament, are increasingly concerned by the existence and enforcement of the current Law for Czech Citizenship.

We are aware of the fact that this law discriminates against persons of Slovak origin residing in the Czech Republic and makes it difficult - in fact, often impossible - for them to become citizens of the country in which they have lived for many years, and in which many of them were born. According to information available to us, tens of thousands of people resident in the Czech Republic may soon be left without Czech citizenship. We find especially disturbing that the majority of those afflicted will probably be members of an already disadvantaged ethnic minority, i.e. the Romanies (Gypsies).

We believe that the acceptance of such a law, which effectively disenfranchises an ethnically defined category of the voters from whom the Parliament's own legitimity is derived, puts the commitment of the Czech Republic to democratic development into serious doubt. In our opinion, this law could be viewed as a serious obstacle for the further integration of the Czech Republic into European structures.

Having the best interests of the Czech Republic in mind, we appeal to all members of the Czech Parliament to revise this law in order to make the Czech citizenship equally accessible to all citizens of the former federation residing on its territory - without retroactive criteria included in the current version.