The Sarközys, a Roma family living in Záhorská Ves (Bratislava Region), have again been the victims of a racist attack, a human rights activist said on May 30.
Five masked men dressed in black raided the makeshift shelter where the family was sleeping in the early hours of May 29. Wielding wooden clubs and iron rods, they shouted "Police! Get up, gypsies!" said Columbus Igboanusi, the family's lawyer and the head of the League of Human Rights Activists (LAPLP).
The assailants, who looked like masked police commandos, beat the entire family up, including the mother and her child, and destroyed all the furniture inside the shelter. The victims are now in hospital.
The family has been singled out for violence many times since 2003. On one occasion, the assailants set their house on fire, brutally beat up the family, and even doused a small child with a flammable liquid before setting it alight. Ever since the fire-gutted house was pulled down on the orders of the village council, the family have been living in a makeshift shelter.
On the initiative of LAPLP, a court in Bratislava ordered the Záhorská Ves village council in early 2006 to allow the Sarközys to set up the shelter on the site of their former house until the case is resolved.
It has been four years since the first attacks and police investigations still have not produced any results, despite the fact that the Sarközys recognized some of the assailants.
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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