Cycling from Hungary to Britain with a message of peace
16.9.2005 - Sandor Laczko

From Budapest to London is a long way, especially on a bicycle. But two Hungarian men have set out to cycle two thousand kilometres across Europe (Slovakia, Austria, Germany, France, Luxembourg and Belgium) to deliver a message of peace to the British capital. The idea comes from the veteran long-distance cyclist Jozsef Zelei.

Radio Budapest spoke to one of the organisers, Andrea Dugo:

"They prepared for it very well and have been thinking about it for a long time. I think it's quite a challenge and it proves a purpose. They believe that as a man of nature, they can deliver a nice idea."

What is the message that they will take?

"The main idea, or main message, is to protest against terrorism and to support love and affection and make sure that the message is received."

What kind of equipment will they take along?

"Well, since it's only the two of them on their bicycles, they will have a service car with them, so that they don't have to worry about bags."

There will also be a camera man, who will film this journey...

"That's right. They will have a small team with them to record everything and make a documentary."

How was the route chosen?

"Many people showed interest and kept in touch on the internet. So they organized the route according to them to visit those interested. They will go from city to city or town to town to visit them and let them sign the Book of Peace."

They will have the Book of Peace but also a flag of peace with them. For what purpose?

"Just to show people what their purpose is and make sure that the message goes through."

So, where will they stop and who will they be meeting?

"They will be meeting the mayors of the towns and cities. At the main squares, the mayors will have a little welcoming reception party, to help popularize the idea among the locals."

Are only the two Hungarians going on this tour or will there be others following in their footsteps?

"Whoever feels like it can join them, but it's only the two of them officially."

What will they do in London when they get there?

"They will present their documents to the mayor of London, which I think is quite exceptional. This proves how important this little mission is."

Who is financing it all? They need catering and many other things.

"They are financing it themselves. They will have a few items with them that are unique for Hungary, such as some of its famous wine, which they will give to the mayors."

Foreign investors angered at Slovakia's move to lower incentives
16.9.2005 - Anca Dragu

Slovakia has one of Central Europe's top performing economies. Foreign companies have invested billions and there's been a strong growth in exports. But now Slovakia's government is trying to sort out how it goes about attracting those foreign investors. A set of rules has been developed following the sacking of Economy Minister Pavol Rusko who it was alleged offered incentives that could not be delivered.

Slovaks like to say that their country has been named the tiger from the Tatras because it has become very attractive for foreign investors. The former Minister of Economy Pavol Rusko has been enthusiastically talking about industrial parks where foreign companies will create plenty of jobs for the unemployed. What ordinary Slovaks seemed to ignore was the fact that these oases of prosperity were to be raised with taxpayers' money. And even more without asking the Ministry of Finance whether the country can really afford them. Finance Minister Ivan Miklos, after discovering that Rusko promised much more to Korean carmaker Kia who are building a plant in Northern Slovakia:

"I have just seen a clause in the initial contract and the total sum the government has to invest in this project reaches about 70 million euros. Nobody at the Ministry of Economy asked my opinion when they signed the contract. I find these tactics very unprofessional. I have informed the management of Kia about this situation."

Pavol Rusko defends his team, who negotiated the contract with Kia and other foreign investors:

"There is harsh competition among countries in the region to attract foreign investors. These people don't come here if they don't get some help from the government. I have a clear conscious because these projects have created thousands of jobs."

With the state budget along a bumpy road the Ministry of Finance has finally decided to make the rules for granting incentives more transparent. Roman Kuruc, the Head of the Trade and Investment Agency explains:

"First of all there is a structure of the future employees especially we will concentrate on the level of education if there is basic, secondary or university education. Secondly the type of the industry whether there is just an assembly line or if there are some products that at the end prove that this industry brings higher added value such as research and development. Of course at the end we will focus on the number of employees - the key factor how the Slovak Republic will decrease its unemployment rate."

According to the new rules a potential investor will receive a decision from the government about providing investment stimuli within 110 days from submitting a complete application form, and the investor should be informed about the sum of this state support within 20 days thereafter. The question is whether some investors may now be unhappy that the Slovak government is not so generous anymore. Roman Kuruc.

"I may say that some of them always push us to give them more that's why these guidelines for us will be public and I think that also members of the government will follow these rules."

One of the companies which threatened to leave when told it asked for too much was the South Korean tyre-maker Hankook Tire, Finance Minister Ivan Miklos said the Slovak Government rejected an investment plan with the Korean investor at the beginning of July because it was excessively generous. Instead of the Sk3.5 million per job originally proposed by former economy minister Pavol Rusko, Miklos is now offering Hankook Tire financial support of 25,000 euro per job. In May, Hankook announced their plan to build a plant in Levice to produce 5 million tyres per year. The investment was to create 1,600 jobs directly, and another 1,000-1,500 jobs indirectly. Now Miklos tries to lure them back saying that his new rules are much more transparent and easier to fulfil.

Divine Word Missionaries open new center for migrants and refugees in Warsaw
16.9.2005 - Danuta Szafraniec

Poland has for decades been a land of emigrants - with Poles migrating to all corners of the world. But now it finds migrants and asylum seekers are choosing to settle on Poland's shores - and that's causing some problems. But efforts are being made to help integrate these newcomers. Among those efforts is a new centre in Warsaw opened by the group "Missionaries of the Divine Word". Radio Polonia visited the center:

Simon Mol, a Cameroon native came to Poland six years ago. After being expelled from his native country and detained in Ghana he sought refuge in Poland. Simon was lucky as he found help first with the Polish Humanitarian Action and then with the missionaries of the divine word. Now he is the editor-in-chief of a bilingual and bimonthly magazine "Voice of the Exile" and the head of the Association of Exiles in Poland. When asked about his past experiences in Poland he stresses the issue of migrants is a difficult one in Poland for many reasons.

"I have been attacked here twice by a group of skinheads. You find a lot of problems here - difficulties, but you have to also attribute this to the general economic and political situation, as far as the historical experience of this country. On the other hand, you also realize that the issue of migrants and refugees is not a priority in the policy of the Polish government. We have a lot of problems - unemployment, so migrants and refugees is not a priority. You don't find people like the commissions or the parliament debate on this thing with much zeal.

On the other hand, most of the workers, the social workers, who are supposed to work with the refugees, they don't have the experience. So that is also a very, very serious problem which usually creates a lot of misunderstanding, because about 80 percent of social workers, they don't know the rights of the refugees. They don't know, for instance, that if you get a refugee status you have the same rights as a Pole."

The center is located in the attic of a three-storey building of the divine word missionaries in the southern Warsaw district called Praga. It occupies roughly 200 m‚² and is able to host about 40 people at once. Father Edward Osiecki is the driving force behind its creation. He says he got first-hand experience in feeling like a refugee while working for many years in Papua New Guinea. He now works with Vietnamese Catholic Community and Refugees Community in Warsaw. He explains the character of the center in the following way:

"What we intend to do with this place? It is, as I said, a place as a home. Everyone can come and share his or her difficulties, problems and drink a cup of tea. Probably not all the problems we would be able to solve, all because the problems are much bigger then we. But at least we can listen to the problems and we can discuss how to help solve administrative and medical problems. It depends on the nature of the problem. At least we would be able to show and accompany the foreigner in his or her struggle with the problem."

Warsaw's missionaries of the divine word did not want to limit its activities to one category of people only hence the name of the center is migrants' not refugees. Father Osiecki also stresses that Poles have often negative attitude towards refugees because they are still struggling with nationalist and Stalinist vision of single-ethnic country.

"Let us remember the fact that Stalin was the first one in the whole one thousand year history of Poland who managed to block Polish people into an ethnic state, and we had a 'Polish ghetto' within the communist bloc. And 50 years is long enough to make some changes in the mentality. And those who today defend Poland for the Poles, and Catholic for Catholics and all this talk, it is like living the heritage of Stalin. Poland has to be accustomed to the fact that a Polish person could be black-skinned or yellow-skinned and they would be as good a Pole as anyone else."

Although there are no official statistics available it is estimated that each year about 35 thousand people migrate to Poland - mostly from Vietnam and Africa. Last year 8 thousand migrants applied for a refugee status with only 315 persons receiving it. Since 2000, 446 Vietnamese applied for it while only one received it.

Old "soldiers" remember days in Communist forced labour battalions
16.9.2005 - Ian Willoughby

Hundreds of elderly men took part in an emotional gathering at the Czech Ministry of Defence this week, recalling their days in the "army" as young men. But they weren't regular soldiers - not allowed to carry weapons, they were in reality forced labourers, punished by the Communists for their class backgrounds.

Monday's ceremony was held to mark the anniversary of the foundation in 1950 of the Pomocne Technicke Prapory, or Technical Assistance Battalions. Members were officially soldiers, but the estimated 50,000 young men forced to join were used for other purposes.

Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek was among the guest speakers.

"Overnight they joined this strange military service without weapons, in which they never knew how long they would have to serve. In reality they had to work deep in mines, in quarries and forests, on the building of tunnels, roads and airports. It was forced labour."

The hardest and most dangerous work was in the mines. Some were killed and others suffered poor health for years afterwards. In 1951 Vladislav Soucek was sent to Orlova, a town he had never heard of. His story is not unusual.

"On the train they were playing miners' music, so I understood that I was going to the mines. It was really hard work, and we got very little training. The mine I worked in was one of the most dangerous, and there were frequent explosions. It had actually been shut after a big explosion in 1947, and they sent us soldiers in instead of regular miners. So we were like guinea pigs! Imagine going underground without ever being certain that you would come back up."

Mr Soucek, now in his 70s, was forced to join because his father owned land, and he was therefore regarded as "unreliable" by the Communist regime. One of his "brothers-without-arms", Mr Hirs from Jindrichuv Hardec, served three years in the Technical Assistance Battalions.

"The worst time for us was in 1952, when they said we would have to serve indefinitely. By the way, we know today that there were even plans to send us to Siberia...Unfortunately, when we got out we bore the tag 'politically unreliable' our whole lives, and through our working lives. So it stayed with us until our retirement, and thank God for 1989."

Since 1989 the former members of the Technical Assistance Battalions have built up a close, brotherly organisation. May they have many more reunions.

Slovenia, Europe's refuge for brown bears
16.9.2005 - Michael Manske

Brown Bears once roamed across much of Europe but in many parts today they are either threatened or extinct. In fact, the total population is put at only 15,000. But Slovenia remains a quiet refuge for some of those brown bears. And the small Alpine country is now helping repatriate bears back into parts of the Alps from which they have disappeared.

Europe's brown bear population has dwindled to near-extinction in places like the French Alps. About ten years ago, there were only about a dozen of them left there. In 1996, France imported two Slovenian brown bears in the hopes of repopulating the area. But unfortunately the two bears, named Melba and Ziva, didn't last long. Just one year later, Melba was shot and killed by a hunter.

The future of Slovenia's bears, in the meantime, is considerably brighter. Dr. Peter Skobrne, undersecretary at the Slovenian Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning, gives us an overview of the situation:

"There is no solid data about how many bears there are in Slovenia. According to the trends we're seeing, the population is stable and rising. It's currently somewhere between 400 and 700 bears."

This is in itself a minor success story, since the number of bears in Slovenia after the Second World War was reported to be in the single digits. Since then, strict measures to protect brown bears have helped the population surge.

This has also lead to Slovenia exporting some bears to other Alpine countries, including Italy, Switzerland, Austria and France. The cost of a bear rings in at under 10.000 euros.

The New York Times recently caused a minor stir in the local media, when it published a story claiming that "Slovenia has, for Europe, become to bears what Japan once was to transistor radios."

Peter Skobrne was unimpressed. He replies:

"It's interesting that reporters are always looking for some sensational news and when there is no sensational news, they make it that way. I think that is the case with this quote. Actually, in the last ten years, Slovenia exported about 15 bears. You cannot compare this with Japanese transistor radios. Also, the exporting of bears has never been a commercial endeavour for us, but has always been in the interest of maintaining bear populations in the Alps, which includes the countries of Austria, Italy and France."

So while it probably won't enjoy an economic boom due to bear sales, Slovenia has at least shown how to successfully manage a threatened species in Europe.