Re: Vaclav Havel on NATO's attack

> Date:          Fri, 30 Apr 1999 10:12:55 -0400
> To:            pen-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu
> From:          Louis Proyect <lnp3@panix.com>
> Subject:       [PEN-L:6218] Vaclav Havel on NATO's attack
> Reply-to:      pen-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu

> > 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)
> 
>