Decked out and primed for a fun Friday on the town, Alena Gronzikova and three friends arrived at the Music Park disco only to be turned away by the doorman. That same evening the group tried a half-dozen other Prague clubs, but they were rebuffed each time. The reason? Gronzikova and her friends are Roms. Its a terrible feeling when they wont let you in just because you have a different color skin, says 25-year-old Gronzikova. Its the same as if they didnt allow in people who dont have legs, or who are somehow handicapped, or bald people. A person feels degraded. While the Czech Republic surges ahead of its former communist neighbors in material terms -- the country is widely recognized as having the most dynamic economy in the region -- the nation has yet to come to terms with at least one nagging problem: relations between ethnic Czechs and the substantial population of Roms, whom many here call blacks because of their darker coloring. In all walks of life, Roms face prejudice, fear and loathing. Last year, the independent Citizens Solidarity and Tolerance Movement recorded more than 80 race-motivated attacks on Roms, including one in which skinheads clubbed a father of five to death with a baseball bat while his wife and children looked on helplessly. In the town of Breclav, a hotel owned by parliamentary candidate Rudolf Baranek posted a sign banning Roms from the premises. While Baranek was reprimanded and moved to a lower position on his partys list for next months elections, he remains a candidate and only removed the sign after nearly a week of outcry. A poll last November by the Institute for Public Opinion Research found that 69 per cent of Czechs haveill feelings toward Roms and only five per cent feel relations are good. Out of eight ethnic groups covered in the survey -- including Jews, Slovaks and citizens of the former Soviet Union -- attitudes toward Roms were by far the most negative. In short, although some Roms have integrated into society, the vast majority remain at its fringes, discriminated against in housing, employment, education and all aspects of public life. Landlords wontrent to them, employers wont hire them, schools dont want them and restaurants wont serve them. You feel inferior. You feel as if youreonly a half a person. Youre a person, but only when you have an obligation. When it comes to rights, you cease being a person and you become a Roma, says Marta Tulejova, an activist with the Citizens Solidarity and Tolerance Movement. We were born in this country, and we want to live in this country alongside the majority.The problems have been exacerbated by a law that has effectively denied Czech citizenship to many Roms since the partition of Czechoslovakia three years ago. When the country split, all citizens were deemed to be either Czech or Slovak, based on their parentage rather than their residence. Since the vast majority of Roms living here are of Slovak descent-- and considered Slovak, even theye never set foot in Slovakia --they had to apply for Czech citizenship, rather than simply beinggranted it, as was the case with most ethnic Czechs. The law has beendecried by groups ranging from the U.S. Congress last autumn to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Council of Europe this month.

These and other organizations have criticized the Czech government for its inaction on the issue and urge amending the law to make iteasier for Roms to gain citizenship. A parliamentary committee haspassed a measure that would allow officials to grant citizenship to certain individuals on a case-by- case basis, but it is unlikely topass before the parliamentary elections next month. Nobody knows exactly how many Roms have been denied citizenship, but the number is certainlyin the hundreds or thousands. Indeed, officials have no clear idea of the total number of Roms in the country, citizens or not. Out of a population of some 10 million, only about 33,000 claimed to be Roms in the last census, taken in 1991. But because many seek to assimilate, or because of discrimination are reluctant to declare themselves as different from the majority, their number is believed to be much higher, perhaps as many as 300,000. Between the effects of the law and the introduction of capitalism, many Roms say their lot has actually gottenworse since the Velvet Revolution that brought down communism here six years ago. While life for Roms was far from easy before 1989, during the communist era Roms were generally guaranteed at least rudimentary housing and employment. Now, with the market economy in full force, many Roms have difficulty securing either. Although the Czech Republic currently has a jobless rate of 2.9 per cent -- the lowest in Europe-- unemployment among Rom men is estimated at between 30 per centand 50 per cent. And many of the unskilled jobs once held by Roms are now being filled by guest workers from countries farther east, such as Ukraine, Russia, Poland and Bulgaria. This country now ass higher standard of living, but Roms dont because they dont have the opportunity, says Emil Scuka, head of the Romany (Rom) Civic Initiative, a political party with no current representation in parliament. For the lowest social group, Roms, the only certainty was the shovel --they could find work digging ditches. Now the Ukrainians have taken away the shovel, and the Roms are left with the street -- criminality, prostitution. If many Roms are criminals -- and statistics and anecdotalevidence indicate that is the case -- activists in the community saythe general economic straits of Roms are to blame. Because poverty is widespread among Roms and employment opportunities are slim, Roms often have no choice but to turn to crime. The root of the communitys problems, virtually everyone agrees, is education. Without better schooling, Roms will never get better jobs and emerge from their current status as second-class citizens, say activists and government officials. Improving Rom education, however, will not be easy. Since many Roms do not speak Czech at home, they start school at a disadvantage to ethnic Czechs. Rather than giving such students remedial Czech, teachers simply ship them off to schools intended for mentally handicapped children, despite a lack of any evidence of any learning disabilities. Because of the structure of the Czech educational system, few student sever transfer out of such schools, so most never end up getting any proper education at all. According to statistics compiled by the Ministry of Education, Roms are 20 times more likely to be in these special schools than in regular schools. The government, meanwhile, defends its record on Rom issues. While acknowledging that racism exists in the Czech Republic, Hana Fristenska, Director of the Governments Council for Nationalities, notes that lawmakers have toughened penalties forracial attacks and police now follow extremist groups more closely. Furthermore, some schools are offering a zero year during which young Roms will be able to improve their Czech language skills before entering first grade, while others are hiring teaching assistants who speak both Czech and Rom. Given the current state of society, the current political direction of this government and the current will of the voters, the government is doing what is currently possible, Fristenska says. The problems of racism and racial discrimination are among the most difficult problems a society faces, and its very hard for the majority group to form common views on them. Nonetheless, Rom activists say the government needs to make a more concerted effort to address the problems faced by their community. Without stronger measures --including far tighter controls on discrimination in all areas, anend to placing Rom children in schools for mentally handicapped, and possibly even some sort of affirmative action -- the community islikely to fall farther and farther behind ethnic Czechs. The stateis doing very little, and they should do more, a lot more, says Scuka.The worst is that both sides are starting to get used to the racism that is here. Roms are starting to get a sort of immunity to it, and the Czechs simply think this is the way things are supposed to.