[PEN-L:6218] Vaclav Havel on NATO's attack

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> OTTAWA, April 29 (AFP) - Czech President Vaclav Havel said here Thursday
> that human rights supersede the rights of states and justify NATO's attack
> on the "genocidal regime" of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
> In a wide-ranging address to a joint meeting of Canada's two houses of
> parliament, Havel said events of the past century were "gradually bringing
> the human race to the realization that the human being is more important
> than the state."

The Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 30, 1995

RIGHTS GROUPS ATTACK CZECH CITIZENSHIP LAW

By ELIZABETH SULLIVAN; EUROPEAN CORRESPONDENT

DATELINE: PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC

A law denying automatic citizenship to most of this nation's 250,000
Gypsies has drawn sharp criticism from the United States and other western
governments.

The Czech Republic denies the law is anti-Gypsy, saying provisions
restricting citizenship to those with Czech ancestry or a crime-free record
are in line with Western policies.

The law makes thousands of Gypsies, including hundreds of abandoned
children, vulnerable to deportation if they cannot establish citizenship.
No Gypsies have yet been deported but adoptions of the abandoned children -
most the offspring of Gypsy prostitutes who never bothered to apply for
citizenship - are reportedly on hold while Czech and Slovak authorities
debate their fate.

The law does not mention Gypsies by name. But its requirements on
residence, ancestry and petty criminality exclude mainly Gypsies, say
lawyers and diplomats who want the law changed.

The law was adopted after Czechoslovakia split into two nations in 1993.
Slovakia gave citizenship to all former passport holders on its soil.

But despite the espoused liberalism of Czech President Vaclav Havel,
recently announced as Harvard University commencement speaker, the Czech
Republic welcomed only those who said they were Czech in communist times
when such a declaration was mostly meaningless. All others - notably
Gypsies - had to go through a lengthy, bureaucratic process to apply. Most
Czech Gypsy families came as laborers from Slovakia after World War II.

A survey among 460 Gypsies in one Czech town found four percent were unable
to obtain citizenship because of petty crime convictions or not having a
permanent address. Most of the others spent months proving eligibility,
even though the majority were born on Czech soil.


Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)