Czech Refugee Facilities Administration caves in to racist invective from Bílina and will not accommodate Romani refugees from Ukraine with a private property owner

The Czech Interior Ministry’s Refugee Facilities Administration has caved in to the racist invective from the Mayor of Bílina, Zuzana Schwarz Bařtipánová (Association of Dissatisfied Citizens – ANO) and will not be contracting with a private property owner to house Romani refugee children and women from Ukraine there. The mayor has posted the news to Facebook.  

“I am taking the liberty of informing you all that the refusal from myself as mayor of the town and from the Governor of the Ústecký Region is being reflected by the Refugee Facilities Administration and these people will not be relocated into Bílina,” the mayor posted along with thanks to all of her followers for what she called their “enormous” support. She furthermore asserted that the municipality is not able “to accept these Ukrainian Romani refugees and integrate and adapt them into normal life with the aid of Romani nonprofit organizations and their social workers.”

The mayor also published the letter she received from the Czech Interior Ministry’s Refugee Facilities Administration responding both to her rejection and that of the Governor of the Ústecký Region, Jan Schiller, about which news server Romea.cz previously reported. “It is with regret that I see both your standpoints disagree with this, and for that reason, the Interior Ministry’s Refugee Facilities Administration has decided not to use the building in Bílina to accommodate these groups according to the relevant decree,” Pavel Bacík, director of the Refugee Facilities, wrote in the letter to the Bílina town hall.    

The elected representatives of the town of Bílina disagree with housing Romani children and women fleeing Russia’s war on Ukraine in a private building on their territory and, in an openly racist statment, the mayor announced that publicly several days ago, calling the Romani children and women “inadaptable”, a term previously used by the Nazis ahead of the Second World War to label those they later murdered. The reason for her basic disagreement with providing housing to Romani children under 14 and their female relatives in privately owned apartment buildings on Max Švabinský Street – or anywhere else on the territory of Bílina – was said by the mayor to be the situation at the Za Chlumem Primary School there and the spreading of socially excluded localities not just in Bílina itself, but overall in the Karlovy Vary, Moravian-Silesian and Ústecký Regions.