The problem of the law on citizenship of the Czech Republic has been repeatedly addressed by Czech Radicals in Agora, and an appeal has been launched for foreign parliamentarians (radicals) to exert pressure on the Czech Parliament to change it. I believe, however, that the issue merits a systematic overview so that the readers of Agora can learn about the particulars without having to resort to older messages from Prague.

1. REASONS FOR OUR OBJECTION TO THE LAW. These are multiple; with a certain degree of simplification, it may be said that we object to the law a) on principle, b) due to its practical consequences.

According to the law, only those persons born on the territory of today's Czech Republic before 1954 are automatically Czech citizens. Those born on "Slovak territory" are automatically Slovak citizens, although they might have come to Prague 60 years ago. Those born on "Czech territory" in 1954 and after are Czech citizens only if their parents were also born there; if the parents were born in Slovakia, they become automatically Slovak citizens, although they might have never even visited Slovakia. Objection on principle: it means that once again a person can become the object of discrimination due to the origin of his or her parents. The process of proving the parents' origin thus bears close resemblance to the proving of "Aryan descent" under the Nazi rule. Also, by accepting such a law the Parliament de facto abolished - disenfranchised - a whole category of voters (a few hundred thousand) who helped elect it. Thus it cast doubt upon its own legitimacy. The absurdity of the situation is best exempl

ified by the fact that not only the active but also the passive rights in the last election were carried out in the country of residence, not in the one which citizenship we now hold; therefore many candidates (and even one deputy who was actually elected) for the Czech Parliament also stopped being citizens by Jan.1, 1993. While they were qualified to be in Czech Parliament - and thus to decide on citizenship of others - they were not qualified to hold the citizenship themselves (!).

The law provides a possibility for those, who were classified as "Slovak citizens", to receive the Czech citizenship if they can prove they have been officially resident in the Czech Republic for two years, were not sentenced for an intentional crime in the last five years, and can prove that they were "released from Slovak citizenship". The practical result is, however, that tens (or perhaps hundreds) of thousands will soon become foreigners in the land where they were born and raised. This situation was bound to happen already in January, 1994, but the Government of Prime Minister Klaus decided shortly before the end of the year to extend the term for changing one's citizenship (from Slovak to Czech) for another six months.

The fact that almost 500 000 people have been denied a citizenship of their country due to their ethnic origin is obvious; still, it would appear that they still have a good chance to apply for it and receive it in the given transitional period (before the term expires in June 1994). Why is it, then, that we expect a huge amount of people to be left without the Czech citizenship?

For this there are several practical reasons. Most important, 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, some 99% 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 know how their status will change after Jun

e 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 fro

m Slovak citizenship", yet most local authorities require the full Slovak documentation. The result is the one described above - according to the independent report of British lawyer and journalist Tom Gross, some 30-70% of Romanies living in the Czech Republic (there are considerable regional differences) will be left without the citizenship.

Additional reasons include the fact that those who are in custody (although not yet sentenced) 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 - persons affected by the new "foreigner status" in July 1994 will be mainly those who are already socially highly disadvantaged, i.e. the less educated and less socially adaptive members of the Romany community, plus a category of old Slovaks who migrated to the Czech Lands already between the wars and are now unaware of the danger or too ill and incapacitated to perform the necessary paperwork for getting the citizenship. The fact is that many old people born in a part of Austria-Hungary before 1918 are now summarily classified as citizens of Slovakia because the place of their birth is now part of that newly independent state. For such people, who have lived in the Czech lands for half a century, it is incredibly humiliating to have to apply - in a very complicated way - for the citizenship of a newly born state.

2. STRUGGLING WITH THE LAW. The protests of Romanies and human-rights activists against the law have so far received little coverage in the press. The general public is to some 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 the restrictive measures.

In a broader historical context, the Citizenship Law may be seen as the final stage of the Czech evolution towards an ethnically clean state. The Czechoslovak Republic of 1918 was only slightly less multinational than Austria-Hungary. Then the Jews were exterminated by Hitler; the Germans were deported en masse after 1945; the Ruthenians were sacrificed to the Soviet Union (Ruthenia being annexed to the Ukraine); and now the Slovaks and Romanies are being written off. Not insignificantly, xenophobic violence is on the rise in the Czech Republic in the last 4 years.

Radicals in the Czech Republic - namely Paolo Pietrosanti and Jan Jarab - have analysed the law, and the Jarab-Horak proposal for an amendment resulted: according to this proposal, all persons classified as "Slovak citizens", who were resident on Czech territory prior to the split of the federation, could receive Czech citizenship without any requirements if they simply asked for it. While this proposal still falls short of the 1918 ruling about citizenship (when Austria-Hungary was dissolved, every citizen had a right to opt for the citizenship of whichever new country he preferred), it could prevent the worst practical consequences of the law. However, the Radicals' view was defended in Parliament only by a few deputies, namely A.Gjuric from the ruling ODS and some members of the Social Democratic opposition. The Government, on the other hand, presented a proposal for an even more restrictive amendment, which would have denied the citizenship to all "Slovak" applicants who had a criminal record in the

ir lifetime, i.e. basically to all Czech Romanies who had ever comitted a crime. In the end, none of the proposed amendments prevailed and the law was left unchanged, with only the deadline for application postponed by 6 months to June 1994.

What can be done? It seems unlikely that Parliament will decide to improve the law without serious foreign pressure; human-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 faces 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 incredible 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, with our 600 parliamentarians etc., just going to wait for it to happen?

A proposed "Appeal to the Czech Parliament" (to be signed by members of other parliaments) can be found in AGORA (Dec.1993).