Good evening. Here is the Monday, June 19 edition of Today in Slovakia - the main news of the day in less than five minutes.
Took years for Moldava Roma to get some justice
The Roma settlement in Moldava nad Bodvou, where the police raid took place in 2013. (source: SME - Vladimír Šimíček)
On this day 10 years ago, the infamous police raid in the village of Moldava nad Bodvou, Košice Region, was carried out.
More than 60 police officers raided the Roma settlement of Budulovská in the village. They pulled out batons and ruthlessly beat anyone who got in their way. They went on to kick in a door and shatter windows. Several Roma had bumps and bruises on their faces and ribs as they described the raid in their testimonies.
The police dismissed claims of inappropriate action. Then interior minister Robert Kaliňák said the information disseminated by the media was misleading. The events eventually led to the prosecution of the actual victims.
It took eight years for the for what happened.
The government and the applicants reached a settlement. According to the agreement, the government will pay a total of €110,000 jointly to eight plaintiffs to cover any and all non-pecuniary damage.
Read more about the Roma in Slovakia:
Discrimination against Roma remained prevalent, Amnesty International says.
MEPs blast "medieval" conditions for Roma.
ECHR: Roma beaten by police suffered inhuman treatment.
She cannot read, she does not understand. Last victim of police raid still faces prosecution.
More stories from The Slovak Spectator website
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FEATURE STORY FOR MONDAY
Slovak researchers improving language capabilities of virtual assistants
(source: Unsplash)
Digital question-and-answer systems in English work just fine: you type in the former and out comes the latter, in more-or-less perfectly grammatical form.
However, the same cannot be truly said about systems based on less widely spoken languages, such as Slovak.
This is where the efforts of Slovak researchers from the Technical University of Košice (TUKE) come in. They have created the first manually annotated Q&A dataset in Slovak, consisting of more than 91,000 factual questions and answers.
EVENT FOR THE WEEK
Petržalka Days
(source: Petržalka.sk)
The 26th edition of the event called PETRŽALKA DAYS 2023 will be presented in an extended version of up to three days this time. Come and join the event from Friday 23rd to Sunday 25th June, and enjoy a packed line-up of entertainment.
Free entry. For more information click here (in Slovak, but allows for a quick Google translation).
In other news
Hlas chair Peter Pellegrini said that if the only option after the September election will be to form a coalition with the Smer and extremist Republika parties, his party will not be a part of it. "With its position to rescind Slovakia's NATO membership, Republika cannot be a partner of Hlas," Pellegrini said on Sunday on a political talk show on the TA3 news television channel.
Up to 77 percent of Slovaks have made the decision on whom to vote for in the September election, according to a new survey by the Focus polling agency, for private TV Markíza. The Smer party tops the list with 90 percent of people firmly decided to cast their vote in their favour, followed by Hlas with 84 and Republika with 83 percent.
Slovak General Prosecutor Maroš Žilinka held talks with his Ukrainian counterpart Andriy Kostin in Uzhhorod on Saturday, with the two discussing the state of investigations into war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine.
The Ján Kuciak Investigative Centre (ICJK) has been awarded the Press Freedom Award, bestowed by the German Free Press Media Association (MVFP), according to ICJK editor-in-chief Lukas Diko. "The Ján Kuciak Investigative Centre team is an excellent example of independent journalism and an ideal continuation of Ján Kuciak's journalistic work," said MVFP head Stephan Scherzer.
A new airline to Podgorica has been added to the regular summer season flights from Bratislava. The first flight to the capital of Montenegro was dispatched on Saturday afternoon; the route is operated by Air Montenegro on Saturdays and Tuesdays until mid-September. The flight takes more than an hour. Podgorica is approximately 65 kilometres from the Adriatic Sea. Here’s where you can fly from Slovak airports.
Find out more about the event here.
WEATHER FOR TUESDAY
Sunny, occasionally cloudy with rain, storms. Daily temperatures between 26 °C to 33 °C. Level 1 high temperatures warning issued for westernmost and southwest Slovakia in the afternoon. (SHMÚ)
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