Czechs keep the largest distance from Romanies out of all ethnic minorities, with less than 10 percent of them saying they could imagine a Romany their partner, friend, neighbour or colleague at work, a poll by Focus agency has shown. About one-fifth of people are willing to accept Romanies as Czech citizens. However, 43 percent would not let Romanies enter the Czech Republic or they would expel them from the country, the poll showed. The second least tolerated ethnicity are the Vietnamese. One-quarter of the respondents said they would not mind a Vietnamese being their partner, friend, neighbour or colleague at work. Fifteen percent said they would accept an Ukrainian in this connection. About one-third of those polled said they would accept the Vietnamese and Ukrainians only as visitors to the Czech Republic. The Czechs show a more accommodating stand to Poles and Germans. Five and 6 percent of Czechs can imagine a Pole or a German as their life partners, respectively.
Sixty percent of Czechs would not mind Poles as friends, neighbours and colleagues. One-fifth would accept them only as visitors to the Czech Republic. Germans would be accepted as friends, neighbours and colleagues by 39 percent of Czechs. One-third of Czechs consider them acceptable only as visitors, the poll showed. Over two-thirds of the respondents said they can imagine a resident of Bohemia as their partner, and a half said they can imagine a Moravian. One-fourth of the respondents said they would accept a Slovak as their partner. Of all ethnicities, Slovaks were most frequently named as acceptable friends. A total of 35 percent of the respondents said they could imagine a Slovak as their friend. The poll showed that residents of Bohemia keep a larger distance from Moravians than vice versa. Out of the respondents from Bohemia, 81 percent said they could imagine a resident of Bohemia as their life partner, but only 37 percent said they can imagine a Moravian. On the other hand, 68 percent of Moravian residents would accept a Moravian as their partner, and 53 percent would accept a Bohemian, the poll showed. The Focus agency conducted the poll on April 10-23 on 1018 Czech citizens aged over 15.
Prague Monitor
