Under Communism, the structural prerequisites
for a civil society - public discourse and non-governmental organizations
- were missing. The public sphere was reduced to the workplace and official
government initiatives. The hundreds of groups, initiatives and clubs which
existed during pre-Communist times were banned by the restriction of public
assembly.
In terms of human rights, the situation was more complex. The Communist
states were usually among the first to ratify conventions concerning social
and economic rights, or group-specific conventions such as the CEDAW (Committee
on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women). They not only ratified
them, but also followed them, for example with respect to the right to
employment and housing. However, given that citizens were deprived of their
basic civil and political rights, these social and economic rights were
applied without public input. Correspondingly, no nongovernmental organizations
advocating these rights emerged and the only NGOs which did exist under
socialism were those concerned exclusively with basic civil and political
rights, such as Charter 77 and the Jazz Section. What resulted was a kind
of silent social contract between the state and those it provided with
paternalist protection.
This has lead to a hierarchical, "two-tiered" perception of human rights
in which some rights are considered to be more legitimate than others:
there is a preference for civil and political rights over social and economic
ones. In the post-1989 political rhetoric, civil and political rights have
been emphasized and social and economic rights have been branded "inflated."
It is telling that the Czech Parliament has yet to approve the EU Social
Charter.
Moreover, Czech governments have been very careful to keep the earlier
social agreement alive. The generous social policy inherited from Communism
has continued to be silently practiced. Under these circumstances, very
few citizens find themselves in a state of need, and with the hesitant
pace of economic transformation, problems such as unemployment have been
postponed as well. As a result, the basic transformation of citizens from
passive recipients of state provisions into active social agents has been
very slow.
Neglect and indifference
In the Czech Republic there is a wide-spread belief that all society
needs to do to form a functioning democratic society is to create the basic
institutions of the legal state, build a standard party system and add
a bill of rights to the constitution. This oversimplified scheme, this
automatism, was clearly followed by the Klaus governments.
The governments under Premier Václav Klaus, repeatedly rejected
the establishment of unique institutions, specifically designed to foster
the assertion of human rights, such as the implementation of an ombudsperson.
Such additional posts were seen as superfluous, and a serious discussion
on the matter has yet to be revived. Poland and Hungary are both much further
ahead in this area: Poland introduced the position of ombudsperson soon
after 1989 and Hungary currently has four such posts.
Neglect of human rights institutions went further. The importance of
human rights education has been downgraded, as demonstrated by the government's
elimination of the UNESCO-affiliated European Center for Human Rights Education
in Prague, at the end of 1992. This pattern of neglect is also vividly
apparent in the new law on NGOs, which took effect on 1 January 1998. This
law imposes a myriad of complex bureaucratic procedures that unnecessarily
complicate the registration procedure, especially for smaller interest
groups.
Nevertheless, such government policies did not provoke much opposition
among the general public or among the very supporters of a civil society
and human rights, such as Václav Havel, who saw no need for a Czech
Helsinki Committee after 1989, since "democracy" had descended on the land.
It seems that the public more or less shared the government's attitude
of automatism. Very few needs or social interests have been publicly expressed
"from below." The oversimplified vision of automatism has prevented Czech
citizens from publicly recognizing and asserting their rights, such as
the loudly celebrated but rarely practiced right of public assembly.
Czechs have, for the most part, refrained from gathering, both in the
form of regular meetings and occasional, organized demonstrations. The
very idea of civil disobedience has been frequently denounced as indecent
and egoistic. An uncritical political loyalty to the new "democratic" regime
is expected not only by the government, but also by the citizens themselves.
Ironically, this means that in the proclaimed "free" society, social consensus
is strongly advocated, while the right to social "dissent" seems to be
less acknowledged than before.
A turning point for this post-Velvet Revolution political habit was
the Global Street Party, organized in May 1998. This was the first major
demonstration since 1989, and the global and generational aspects of this
expression of social dissent brought new dimensions to the public's understanding
of politics. Not only has that event been misunderstood by the police and
politicians, but it has even been denounced by the representative of the
so-called Civic Institute (Obèanský institut) Roman Joch,
who referred to the demonstrators as "the mob" and "the mad young people."
The civic principle
Another form of automatism can be identified in the belief that abstract
and broadly articulated equal individual rights are sufficient: this is
the ill-defined "civic principle" based on an overemphasis of individual
rights. It rests on an unawareness of historically, socially and culturally
constructed barriers and glass ceilings. The individualistic civic principle
has completely ignored the notion that, given certain group-based inequalities,
there are some individual rights that can only be articulated and asserted
through a group. It has devalued the idea of group interests, claiming
they are politically irrelevant, or again "egoistic." For some time, such
arguments were used against nascent lobby groups concerned with the rights
of Roma, women, children, doctors and teachers.
Resistance to the concept of group-based human rights also exists among
high-profile human rights activists and former dissidents. The Czech Helsinki
Committee, for example, only published its first report on women's rights
in 1997. Even the newly emerging non-governmental organizations practice
a certain amount of self-censorship and self-limitation. Jiøina
Šiklová, the co-founder of the Gender Studies Center in Prague,
appeased a television audience by saying that gender issues should not
be stressed too much, for it would only add to the social tension. In other
words, when citizens have formed groups or initiatives, their interest
has been perceived, both by the general public and by themselves, to be
only semi-public, and semi-legitimate.
In the West, the ability to recognize de facto mechanisms of group-based
social barriers that prevent the universal applicability of human rights
developed over a relatively long time. This development was prompted by
the social movements of the 1960s which brought about new structures of
civil society based around what sociologist Anthony Giddens calls "life
politics," rather than mere "emancipatory politics." Through this development,
the concept of discrimination acquired a new content, which included indirect,
structural or symbolic (that is, not open or legally codified) forms of
discrimination. Correspondingly, a new language was generated which recognized
these forms: ageism, sexism, homophobia, political incorrectness.
This experience is historically absent in Central and Eastern Europe
and hence this wider concept of discrimination is often denounced as another
import from the West which does not correspond to "our" experience. As
a result, the concept of discrimination, and its presentation in the Czech
media, remains locked in 19th-century imagery. This outdated understanding
also permeates the legal code, which although not discriminatory itself,
fails to explicitly define discrimination. It has only been very recently
that public consciousness has slowly begun to acknowledge that additional,
explicitly anti-discriminatory laws have to be adopted in order to prevent
de facto discrimination.
The public discourse
Apart from the historical perspective, the structural inadequacies of
Czech civil society today have to do predominantly with the concept of
"the public" as such. The concept of civil society has been reduced and
lacks the public dimension that has been so crucial in the Western tradition.
The structures of civil society that came into existence after the collapse
of Communism tended to remain on the level of free association, without
becoming really public, in the sense of actively representing common concerns
and working to affect state policy. We can again look to the example of
post-Communist initiatives of women's groups, which did not allow themselves
to make concrete women's issues into public or even political issues, but
hid them behind apolitical claims of "morality" or "humanity." As a result,
an empty space remains between official political structures, such as political
parties and state institutions, and civic groups, which are only semi-public.
The crucial role of the media in bridging and reducing this gap has
only gradually been recognized. Journalists have tended to ridicule civic
initiatives in the name of the civic principle, and have often simply mediated
the views of politicians. Little information has been reported about the
existence of highly-structured, non-governmental organizations in pre-Communist
times, although it is precisely such an example which could dispel the
false notion that group-based civil, public and political activities are
simply something imported from the West, which contradicts the Czech tradition.
Often the media fail to recognize human rights issues and unintentionally
ghettoize them. For example, a story in the weekly Týden about the
right of hearing-impaired children to receive education in sign-language
was presented not in terms of the human right to education but under the
heading "social care." The adoption of new legislation concerning relevant
public issues, such as family law, child protection or the registered cohabitation
of homosexuals, is almost never accompanied by public discussion in the
press. Communication between journalists and legal experts and social scientists
has been severely lacking.
Conclusions
Although over the past two years there have been some gradual changes
in approaches to human rights, in particular minority issues, on the side
of the media and civil organizations, the development of civil society
in the Czech Republic after 1989 has been slowed down both in terms of
public discourse and in terms of the articulation and defense of particular
interests. The articulation of less ideologically bound civic issues has
suffered under a two-tiered view in which some issues are seen as more
basic or "historical," and others as "luxury" - not noble enough to receive
public or political status. This restricted interpretation of human rights
has prevented the broader assertion and recognition of these rights, and
unless it is expanded will continue to pose a major obstacle to the spread
of plurality and the appreciation of plurality as a value within Czech
society.