ROMA living in the vicinity of Ťahanovce, a district of Košice, were forced to leave their houses on May 17 when municipal authorities decided to demolish an illegal waste dump and illegal shanties that had been built around it.
“Firstly because there was a danger of fire and short circuit since there were illegal electrical connections,” Martina Viktorínová, the spokesperson for Košice town hall told the TASR newswire, adding that public health experts had also reported that there was a danger of an epidemic.
The government’s plenipotentiary for Roma communities, Miroslav Pollák, responded, however, that the Košice authorities violated Slovak as well as international law by their conduct, TASR wrote. He said that municipalities, when trying to solve problems similar to this one, would do better to contact his office for consultation.
The Roma were originally slated to be relocated to the Lunik IX neighbourhood but refused to go and were then placed in a military tent erected close to their original shanties where they were expected to stay until they returned to the place of their permanent address.
The Roma, however, left the military tent and moved into their own smaller tents, TASR reported. Viktorínová said the local authorities view that act as an organised provocation.
