Child welfare official for Czech Republic's second-largest city says she did not threaten to take custody of Romani refugee children from Ukraine but won't say what she told their mothers

Aid volunteers in Brno who have been in contact with the children and women of Romani origin who have fled the war in Ukraine have reported that a city clerk apparently threatened to take custody of the children if they do not move away from the spot to which the city engineered their relocation in order to get them away from the railway station. The threats allegedly took place on Wednesday with the assistance of municipal police officers in uniform who visited the fenced plot of land between Benešova Street and Koliště Street. 

Lucie Darebníková, head of the Brno Department for the Social and Legal Protection of Children, rejects the claim that such threats were made, but does not want to specify what she was talking about with the refugees. “All the mothers told us that the clerk came to them and told them that if they did not leave the Czech Republic and did not leave Brno, they would take their children,” said Brno volunteer Petr Erin Kováč, who is aiding the children and women.

“They said something different to each family, but it had to have been something that frightened them so much that some of them felt they had no choice but to immediately leave. Even those whose benefits are in the process of being set up have left,” said a journalist for the daily Deník N, Jana Ustohalová, who was on the scene on Wednesday.

“They told us that they had also been threatened when they were living in front of the railway station, about 10 women told us that independently of each other,” said Kristina Studená of Brno’s civil society effort, Grand Initiative, which is aiding the Romani refugees. Lucie Darebníková, head of the Brno Department for the Social and Legal Protection of Children, has rejected the idea that she threatened the women on Wednesday.

“I stood here with these people, I had an interpreter here, I had my colleagues here. All I know is that I wasn’t the only one who was here and who heard me, so the eyewitnesses can confirm what was happening here,” Darebníková said, but would not specify what she did say to the refugees.

The children of Romani origin and their adult female relatives who have fled the war in Ukraine were relocated to the plot of land near the Hotel Grand by the City of Brno from the railway station, where they had been living for weeks. The outdoor space in front of the station where they had originally been sleeping was then fenced off by the city.