THE CHAIR of the Roma Union Party (SRÚ), František Tanko, called on the Slovak National Party (SNS) to immediately remove political ads that Tanko believes attack Slovakia’s Roma minority, the TASR newswire reported.
“We Gypsies are people and citizens of this country, too,” Tanko said, as quoted by TASR, adding that the party is considering filing a criminal complaint regarding the SNS ads.
Tanko described the slogans on at least three of the ads as having a racist undercurrent. ‘Let’s not put up with parasites!’, ‘How much longer are we going to pay for the Roma?’ and ‘Matovič wants to get Gypsies into parliament’, are the text of the slogans, TASR wrote.
Tanko also said that political parties in Slovakia have used the so-called ‘Roma card’ as a tool to get into parliament but they are not concerned about addressing the problems plaguing the Roma population.
