Police raid in Rudňany, central Slovakia
10 September 1998
The Spišská Bela-based Romani organisation Zor reported to the ERRC that a police raid had taken place in a Romani settlement in the central Slovak town of Rudňany on July 4.
According to witness testimony, approximately sixty policemen with dogs entered the settlement in around ten automobiles. Among them were the district chief of police and the mayor of Rudňany. They allegedly told the inhabitants of the approximately 1000-person community to go inside their houses. Following this, officers accompanied by dogs conducted house-to-house searches in which they broke windows, doors and furniture. Officers reportedly demanded that inhabitants give them hammers and axes and other tools. They also confiscated an electric drum set. In addition, police officers checked identification papers, and if these were out-of-date, they were confiscated. Roma were not provided with receipts for confiscated articles or documents, and three weeks after the raid these had still not been given back. According to one witness, 40-year-old Ms K.B., six or seven officers violently entered her house, were extremely rude, examined her identification papers and confiscated a hatchet. She received no receipt for the hatchet and has not seen it since. In addition, five police officers reportedly beat two male youths in one of the houses in the settlement. The officers remained in the Romani settlement for approximately two hours. Local Roma have not filed a complaint with the police, since they assume they would be further terrorised if they did so.
According to inhabitants, this was the first such raid to take place in the settlement. One third of the three thousand inhabitants of Rudňany are Roma. They live on the site of a former mercury mine and despite having been given 300,000 Dutch guilders by a charity organisation for the acquisition of new land, they were unable to purchase land due to opposition by local authorities. Roma report that the mayor of Rudňany has also refused their request for a meeting place.
In other news from Slovakia, RFE/RL reported on July 31 that Prime Minister Vladimir Mečiar had stated on Slovak television on July 30 that ethnic minorities in Slovakia, including Hungarians, enjoy more widespread rights than the average minority in Europe. Mečiar reportedly told two British journalists that "the survival of the Hungarian minority is guaranteed by the high birth rate of Gypsies, who consider themselves Hungarian." Mečiar has made similar statements in the past.
(ERRC, RFE/RL, Zor)
