Snitch on the homeless

The feature documentary Přes hranice (Across Borders), consisting of five short documentary films taking place on Central European borders, was shot several years ago. I was particularly intrigued by a short Peter Kerekeš movie about Slovaks living near the Austrian border who used to snitch on others during the communist regime. Especially memorable is the scene reconstructing the process. A plump elderly lady traipses through snow to a special phone on the street, used for snitching, she eagerly calls some kind of headquarters and reports the occurrence of dangerous elements near the border. Her eyes are shining when she's telling the director how sorry she is there's nobody to snitch on any more. It was, she says, the most exciting thing she has done.

If she were living in Prague these days, she could be happy again. City Hall has recently made public its action plan to deal with homeless people, in which it pledges to establish a hotline on which Praguers can snitch on their fellow citizens – the homeless. The snitching citizens will be aided by a special municipal police team and a „cleanup“ team that will liquidate the homeless people's shacks and lairs. A caught homeless who will cooperate (i.e., report his personal data) will be offered an individual resocialisation plan (i.e., a job offer, help with personal documents, accommodation, etc.). The rest will travel to a drunk tank, a hospital, or a police station, accompanied by the special…