Instead, I found myself behind a barbed wire fence in a repurposed immigration detention center. According to her, it was dirty and full of strangers. Some of them were aggressive towards her and her children.
Baro, a Roma woman, was sent to prison-like institutions, mostly with other Roma families, while tens of thousands of other Ukrainian refugees were sent to private homes in the Czech Republic. I found a place to stay in a dormitory.
"It was like a prison. It was terrible. It was scary. There were a lot of people, a lot of scary people," she told her CNN.
Her story is familiar, according to NGOs and activists.
"Roma refugees are automatically placed in non-standard accommodation," said Patrick Pliesol, head of the Ukraine program at Lomodrom. Lomodrome is a Czech her NGO focused on Roma rights and advocacy. “It is very sad and I am not afraid to say it amounts to institutional racism and racism.”
In a statement emailed to CNN, the country's police headquarters said that ethnicity played no role in the application process.
"We do not consider applicants' ethnicity, only their citizenship," a spokeswoman for the Czech Police Headquarters told her CNN in a statement.
CNN visited the shelters and spoke with dozens of refugees, social workers and activists from the Czech Republic, Romania and Moldova. The challenges faced by Roma refugees in all three countries are remarkably similar.
Roma refugees from Ukraine are routinely accused of not being Ukrainian. They are segregated in poor quality accommodation. According to some NGOs, many were given misleading information about their rights. Also, problems that are easily resolved when faced by other people fleeing Ukraine (such as missing passport stamps) are often used as reasons for their refusal.
Romanian Roma rights activist Nik Dumitru told CNN that the refugee crisis has shed light on the kind of hostility Roma still face in Europe. .
"Discrimination against blacks and homosexuals is becoming unacceptable in Europe, or at least people refrain from doing this in public. group of people and it's still okay to discriminate in Europe," he told CNN.
Roma communities have faced persecution and discrimination in Europe since they first arrived on the continent from India hundreds of years ago, and have suffered persecution during the Holocaust.
According to the European Union's Fundamental Human Rights Organization, approximately 90% of people live below the poverty line.
Dmitr works for Aresel, a Bucharest-based Roma civic education initiative focused on refugees who fled Ukraine earlier this year after receiving multiple reports of discrimination. guessed
He made a critical point for the organization when, in April, a large group of Roma refugees complained that they were denied humane food at a relief station in Bucharest. You said the turning point had come. "They were kicked out because they were 'too many', 'too loud' and people said, 'You are not Ukrainians, you are Roma, go away,'" Dmitr said. rice field.
ADRA, a group that distributes food, told CNN that the incident caught on camera was "taken out of context and led to ideas of discrimination and intolerance towards the Roma people." said. It said the Roma group, which consisted mostly of men, was rejected because they were in an area reserved for mothers and children, adding that it did not tolerate discrimination of any kind. "The group left the room with the announcement of another person not affiliated with ADRA," he said in ADRA's response, adding that other Roma groups in Ukraine were at the center.
The Bucharest Municipal Emergency Coordination Center told CNN that he provided humanitarian assistance "without discrimination," adding that it "has not received any reports of discrimination in the provision of assistance."
Across the Moldovan border, Roma mediator and journalist Elena Silv was also horrified to see what was happening in one of the refugee centers in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova. said.
Ms Silv said she was initially asked by the authorities to help "handle" the situation, but after witnessing the discrimination firsthand, she became an advocate for Roma refugees instead. said.
``When I saw the ignorance and the attitude. No, and they asked for tea or [diapers], and the Moldovan authorities accused them of not being refugees and told them to leave saying "we want normal people" '" she told CNN. "And this was happening right before my eyes. What do you think I should do?" CUGC) said shelters "must adhere to the principle of non-discrimination and promote and respect human rights at all stages of service delivery." , regardless of race, color, nationality or ethnicity.
CUGC "constantly consults with Roma refugees and their specific needs," she told CNN, adding, "Implement measures to combat discriminatory attitudes towards refugees, particularly Roma groups." I do," he said.
Like many Roma refugees who have no home to return to, Luisa from 9 months to her 11 years old, her Baro and their child We are cracks in the system.
She told her CNN that the Czech detention center she and her children were sent to was so scary that she decided to leave. The family ended up camping with hundreds of Roma refugees at Prague's Central Station. She was told by authorities that she was no longer eligible for assistance because she had "refused" the accommodation offered.
Pliesol said this was a common scenario and was often due to poor communication. "Some of these people are functionally illiterate, in post-traumatic situations, have been offered places in detention facilities that temporarily turn into accommodation, and say, 'The prison here is your home now.' . '" He said.
"They do not understand the serious consequences of declining the offer," he added.
Baloh eventually ended up in one of two makeshift refugee camps on the outskirts of Prague, which were later merged into one.
Camp officials say it is where authorities send people they say are not qualified to help. The Czech government has said that people who do not have temporary protection status can leave the country after staying for a few days.
The conditions of the camp, to which CNN was granted access by the responsible authorities, were basic: a square partially shaded by a gazebo surrounded by large military tents. There are temporary toilets and portable showers, and meals are provided three times a day. Most of the inhabitants are Roma, many from the poorest regions of Ukraine.
Nikol Hladikova, her social her worker in charge of the camp, is head of the humanitarian department of the Social Service Center of Prague, a municipal institution. She has been involved in the refugee crisis response since its inception and corroborates Barrow's account of her detention facility situation.
"The first time we visited one of them, we came in a bus full of refugees and turned the bus around because the conditions there were just awful." she told her CNN. “There was dirt and excrement everywhere, no kettle to boil water, and I was carrying a month-old baby.”
Hladikova said she and her colleagues were concerned. After making a statement, it said conditions at the facility had improved.
Separation "unintentional", officials say
Lida Kalisinko left her home in the Odessa region near the Ukraine-Moldova border after the war Erupted and broke out. She, her daughter, and her two granddaughters spent the last three months converting an abandoned university building in Chisinau into a refugee shelter. The
building houses over 100 of her refugees, most of them Roma. Most of the minority who are not Roma are citizens of former Soviet states in Central and West Asia, such as Tajikistan and Azerbaijan.
A single tap of drinking water supplies the entire building, and discarded furniture litters dark corridors where small children roam. At the time of CNN's visit in mid-July, several Covid-19 cases had been reported among residents.
Standing outside a large gray building, Kalisinko pointed to a portable shower unit provided by UNICEF. The facility did little for her granddaughter, who uses her wheelchair, she said. She said, "She's only showered four times since she's been here because it's very difficult to get her there, there are a lot of stairs and the showers are not accessible to disabled people.
The Moldovan government's Crisis Management Center (CUGC), which is in charge of the shelter, told CNN that it was trying to improve conditions at the shelter and install hot water in the building. Once that is completed, we are told that shower facilities will be installed on each floor.
In a written response to questions from CNN, the CUGC denied having intentionally segregated Roma refugees in shelters, stating that it had Said it was placed there.
Moldova was one of the poorest countries in Europe at the time of its large numbers of refugees entering the country, and has limited capacity to deal with the refugee crisis. Since the war began, more than 550,000 people have crossed from Ukraine to her country of 2.6 million people. The majority have already fled to other wealthy European countries, but about 88,000 remain, according to the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR.
Ala Valentinovna Saviena also wants to leave Moldova. The 49-year-old told CNN she hopes to leave her hometown of Odessa in late February to join her relatives in Germany. However, her 19-year-old son does not have a passport or other identification, making it very difficult for her to travel to EU member states.
Moldova, which is not a member of the EU, changed its entry requirements for illegal immigrants fleeing Ukraine after the civil war began, but those who want to join the EU are forced to face more bureaucratic demands. face the doctrine.
This is a common problem faced by Roma in Ukraine. “In Moldova he has 5,000 Roma refugees, many of whom are undocumented. He is probably 30%,” said Sirbu. “We tried to work with the (Ukrainian) embassy, but we could not get new documents there,” she said.
Ukrainian authorities have set up special help points near the border where people can request new documents, but returning across the border is out of reach for many who have already fled. It's not there.
For Saviena's son, his age is even more complicated. As a man over the age of 18, he may not be allowed to leave Ukraine if he returns. In order to protect the country he said the rule requiring most men between the ages of 18 and her 60 to remain in Ukraine was not strictly enforced at the beginning of the war, but is now being enforced. increase. Saviena said her son was allowed to leave Ukraine through the humanitarian corridor.
Activists said Ukrainian Roma wanting to come to Europe were also victims of deliberate misinformation, including misleading guidance on required documentation.
"There's a lot of false information going around on Facebook. If you tell them you can't go to Romania without a biometric passport, they believe it and won't come even if it's not true," says Lucien. Georgiou, who was Dmitr's colleague at Aresel, told CNN.
Long Bureaucracy
But even those with the right papers are not guaranteed a warm welcome. Several activist groups report that Roma refugees across Europe undergo lengthy background checks to determine if they are eligible for protection.
Czech Interior Minister Vit Laksan said in May that he would Said that such a check is necessary.
Veronika Dvorska of Iniciativa Hlavak, a volunteer group that helps refugees arriving at Prague's Central Station, said the review process could take her up to 10 days.
"We sent people to registration centers and after being told they needed to be checked, they came back to us. In our experience, it's not just Roma refugees But most of them were Roma refugees," she said. CNN. “There have been no reports of the return of non-minority refugees.”
Dvorska said that at the height of the crisis in May, as many as 500 people took refuge in train stations waiting to be checked. .
According to a statement from the Interior Ministry, the Czech government considered the dual citizenship of Roma refugees a major problem and sent a special diplomatic letter to the Hungarian government.
But there is little evidence that it was a widespread problem. The Czech Interior Ministry told CNN that police had carried out 7,100 tests and found 335 people with dual citizenship. 201 have Hungarian citizenship and 66 have Polish citizenship. The rest retained many of her other EU country citizenships.
However, Hladikova and Priesol say many of the Ukrainian Roma who hold Hungarian passports are Hungarians living abroad during his controversial decade of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. He noted that he was granted Hungarian citizenship as part of a policy of distributing passports to
“We all criticized and protested the Orban government. This is the pinnacle of hypocrisy,” said Pliesol.
In her May statement, the Czech government announced it would refuse anyone who did not have an EU entry stamp in order to crack down on those "not fleeing the war." passport.
Dvorska and Pliesol each said the rule appeared to apply only to Roma refugees. Others who do not have stamps are provided another way to show that they were living in Ukraine when the war broke out.
Separately, the Czech government said it would not accept applications for temporary protection status, her EU measure, from people who had applied for protection in another of her EU member states.
The European Commission rejected both of these statements, saying they were not in compliance with European law. In response to CNN's question, the European Commission said that an EU member state cannot currently deny the status of people who do not have protected status in her other EU member state, and in the process " It doesn't matter if it's stamped or not."
Asked about the discrepancies between EU guidance and the Czech approach, an Interior Ministry spokesperson said that under Czech law, people whose protected status had been revoked in her other EU Member States could: He reiterated that he was not eligible for the qualification in the Czech Republic. Czech Republic.
Mr Priesor said the seemingly arbitrary rules were all part of the Czech government's strategy to deter people from applying for visas. "The authorities deliberately put hurdles in the process and this atmosphere creates a very uncomfortable environment," he said.
The Czech Ministry of Interior said that applications would be processed by "experienced police officers who can detect fraud during interviews."
"But this is a reflection of the mood in society and its reluctance to integrate the Roma people. There are very few,” Pliesol said. Added.
For the first time in
school, Baloh told CNN that Prague, like dozens of others in his camp, would like to stay in the Czech Republic for an extended period of time. said. he has no home
"I want my children to go to school. I want to work. I had a job in Ukraine and was a cleaner in a restaurant," she told CNN.
Hladikova said her department is trying to find longer-term accommodation for people who want to stay and integrate into Czech society. Most camp residents are illiterate, and cultural differences persist.
"I have known some of these families since April and can see how much they have improved and it is incredible. and absorbs new things very quickly, but this is not something that [outsiders] can see," she said.
"Unfortunately, many people do not come here. They are stopped at the station and sent back to Ukraine," from the official registration center and help point.
Hladikova said that even though other authorities wanted her family to leave the country as soon as possible, she wanted her job to stay like Baro and integrate into society. Helping people, she affirms.
"We have different goals and different styles. I am here to take care of my clients and help them in any way I can. I don't want to do this, it's been going on for a long time," she said.
Her friendly and serious demeanor makes her Hladikova very popular at the camps she runs. Her kids came over to hug her when CNN visited. Later, when a water fight broke out in the scorching heat of the midday, she laughed and had her children spray water on them.
Barokina's eldest daughter, her 11-year-old Hannah, told CNN she never went to school until she came to Prague. Now she goes almost every day.
That day, during an impromptu math class in one of her tents, she was working on her 72+9 problem. Eight rows of colorful beads staggered to one side, she stuck for a moment, staring nervously. She is a volunteer teacher.
Then, with a little help, she found her answer. Everyone around her was smiling as she whispered: "81."
