The Roma Initiative of Slovakia (RIS) party agrees with a report drawn up by the US State Department in which it claimed, among other things, that Slovakia continues to struggle when it comes to observing the human rights of its Roma minority, RIS chairman Alexander Patkoló told the TASR newswire on March 15.
Patkoló also said that RIS is “disgusted at a shocking racist response from the Slovak National Party (SNS)” and its first vice-chair Anna Belousovová.
Belousovová dismissed the US State Department’s claims as “completely off-base, as the problem is wholly the opposite.” She said it is Roma citizens who to a large extent commit crimes, steal from and attack decent people whose money goes to their social benefits. “If the US claims that the Roma are discriminated against, it should take in at least 100,000 of them and teach them to work and live as people,” she said.
Patkoló rejected Belousovová's allegations as a “miserable and gross assault on defenceless Roma that actually proves the report to be right.” He said RIS is so profoundly indignant at SNS’s statements that it is calling on “the entire Slovak public not to cast a single vote in the upcoming election for SNS, whose members may have as many as five degrees, but will still be nothing more than a disgrace to Slovakia as their national and patriotic sentiment lies only in their fat accounts stuffed with money from bulletin-board tenders, emissions and other tenders”. TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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