Czech intellectuals also to blame for Canadian visa requirements

The conservative daily Lidové Noviny accuses Czech intellectuals of bad-mouthing their own state, saying they have conveyed a distorted picture of the relationship with the Roma minority in the debate about the reintroduction of Canadian visa requirements: "This is not the first time that theoreticians from Prague have sent caricatures of the situation here to the outside world. The most bizarre, but by no means only case was the neighbourhood conflict in Matični Street in Ústí nad Labem. The residents living quietly on one side of the street wanted to protect themselves from the noisy residents on the other side. Thanks to the energetic intervention of local 'observers' the whole affair became completely removed from reality. After weeks of reading about the case the readers of Western European newspapers must have been left with the impression that a replica of the Warsaw Ghetto housing a minority kept behind barbed wire had been created. … It's interesting to observe what impact the words of intellectuals to the effect that the Czech state is responsible for the exodus [of the Roma] can have."

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