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Fw: From Ken Biggs in Prague (Postmark Prague news release)
From KEN BIGGS, 7/08/01 01:53:37
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POSTMARK PRAGUE No.342
News release (474 words)
Tuesday 7 August 2001
BRITISH AMBASSADOR IN PRAGUE TO BE REPLACED
by Ken Biggs
Editor of the English-language monthly Postmark Prague
The British Foreign Office announced last week that its ambassador in
Prague, David Broucher, would be replaced in the autumn. Although the
British government will never admit it, the reason is that his position has
become untenable since he was caught out lying to Czech foreign minister
Jan Kavan over the reasons why a Czech Romany journalist was denied entry
to Britain while his white Czech colleague was allowed through.
According to Kavan, Broucher told him that the London address given by the
journalist on a British immigration form issued at Prague Airport "did not
exist and could not exist". On the strength of this, Kavan said that he
was
satisfied that the stationing of British immigration officers at Prague
Airport, with the permission of the Czech Republic's Social Democrat
government, was not intended to prevent Romanies visiting Britain or an act
of racial discrimination.
A reporter from Czech Television, the journalist's employer, had no trouble
at all in finding the address. The man living there told the Czech reporter
that he was indeed a friend of the Romany journalist, as the latter had
told the British officials. In the words of a British commentator on Czech
Radio's English-language station Radio Prague, "It was another PR failure
for the British embassy."
Meanwhile in London, Wendy Roebuck, Czech Desk Officer at the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office, told Somerset Labour councillor Brian Smedley, who is
coordinator of the Bridgwater Czech/Slovak Friendship Society, that a
letter of invitation signed by a British national would be sufficient to
allow any Czech citizen to enter Britain.
But at last Thursday's meeting of the Czech government's Inter-Departmental
Commission on Romany Affairs, commission members were introduced to a
Romany woman from Brno, Ms Irena Bagarova, who had been denied entry to
Britain by British immigration officers working at Prague Airport even
though she had shown them a letter of invitation from a British national
and had been to Britain three times before to see relatives living there.
The British Embassy now says it is "reviewing" her case.
Organisations which last week came out against racist persecution of the
Romany minority in the Czech Republic included the American Helsinki
Committee, whose chairperson recalled that it was 47 years to the day when
the Nazis gassed 2,897 "gypsy" women, children and men at Auschwitz.
The
United Nations Human Rights Committee also expressed its concern at the
situation in the Czech Republic, implying that government measures to fight
anti-Romany racism had proved inadequate and that de facto
discrimination continued.
Czech Communist MPs continued to stress that the British government's
action in sending immigration officers to Prague was a violation of the
Czech Republic's national sovereignty. END
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