BELA POD BEZDEZEM, Czech Republic (dpa) – Tall pines swayed in the breeze high above a Bulgarian man as he pointed to his scarred arms and muttered in broken German that the Russian KGB has been trying to kill him.
A few minutes later, after realizing his audience couldn’t help, the man shrugged and strolled dejectedly back to the old army barracks where he lives with some 500 men, women and children from around the world.Such is life in Bela pod Bezdezem, one of three government-run camps for political and human rights asylum-seekers in the Czech Republic. Every person in the wooded, isolated camps has a story to tell and wants someone to help.But government officials say only about 2 per cent of the 2,500 refugees in the country at any one time truly qualify for asylum as bona fide victims of political, religious or human rights persecution.The rest, officials say, are “economic” refugees hunting for work and a better material life, ideally in European Union countries where living standards are higher and jobs more plentiful than the Czech Republic.For most of the refugees – and perhaps the scarred Bulgarian, too – the camps are stepping stones on the way to Germany, Britain and other wealthy countries. A few months after arriving at the Czech camps, most find a way to move west.“The Czech Republic is not the destination country” for most asylum-seekers “but a transit country,” said Bela camp Director Libor Tondr. “Yet officially, they don’t declare they are here for economic reasons.”Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross, whose ministry oversees refugee camps, recently complained that the government’s ability to help people escaping persecution was being undermined by an influx of economic refugees. To counter the increase, the government has doubled spending on free transportation back to the refugees’ homelands.While E.U. countries have recently streamlined systems for processing asylum-seekers and weeding out economic refugees, the Czech Republic’s process is bogged down by backed-up courts. An asylum seeker might be rejected by the interior ministry within three months, but court appeals can stretch his stay for years.And during those years, refugees are allowed to come and go from the camps freely, even for weeks at a time. In many cases, that gives them time to make contacts and find a way to illegally cross the border into neighbouring Germany or Austria.Tondr said although a rejected asylum-seeker must by Czech law leave the country and return home within 48 hours, the police “do not have the money to control everyone.”At Bela, most refugees come from poverty-wracked countries in East Europe. This week the largest group from any single country – 80 – were from Moldova. Other big groups were from Georgia, Ukraine and Armenia.Africans in the camp include people from Sudan, Chad and Ethiopia. But Tondr said, “The Africans are totally transit. They are not going to stay here. The countries they want are in the European Union.”In one of the camp’s two-room flats, a 39-year-old woman from Mongolia lives with her husband and their five daughters, ages 15 years to 4 months. She said the family left their homeland three years ago in search of a country that gives people “total freedom”. Since then, they’ve lived in Czech and Polish refugee camps.“In our country, they say you can sleep, eat and work – that’s all,” the woman said. “We would like to live in a democratic country, to talk freely and have total freedom, which is not possible in our country.”In another flat, a 43-year-old Iraqi man lives with his wife and daughters, ages 10 and 13. He said he fears for his life because the Iraqi government accused a relative of being part of a banned political group.The man applied for Czech asylum two years ago and hopes to stay out of Iraq, even if he has to live in the crowded camp. “It’s better than nothing,” he said. “At least it’s safe here.”The Bela facility was built as an army based in the 1960s when the former Czechoslovakia was a satellite of the Soviet Union.Today, the concrete barracks are decaying and dirty. But at least the surrounding woods provide a quiet setting, opportunities to pick blueberries and places for children to play.The Czech camps and the refugee-processing system are only five years old. Political squabbling in the early years of the 11-year-old Czech democracy delayed establishment of the current system.Tondr said the government is still learning how to handle refugees and adopt Western Europe standards as part of the country’s bid to join the E.U. For example, now there’s more emphasis on starting small, community-based refugee facilities such as in Germany. And the Swedish government recently financed training for Czech camp workers.The Czech system has even had some notable success stories, such as the case of a Belarus doctor who received political asylum and now practices at a Prague hospital.But the bulk of the assignment involves people who feel they and their children deserve a better life in the west. For the forseeable future, that means Czech camps like Bela will house people with stories to tell, waiting to move on.
