By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe Desk
OSTROVANY, Slovakia – In the eastern Slovak town of Ostrovany the town council approved and built a 150 meter long and 2.2 meter high wall out of gray concrete slabs to separate the Roma community from the rest of the village. Officials in Ostrovany say that the wall was necessary to protect Slovak homeowners whose gardens bordered the Roma settlement.
The wall was built with €13,000 of public funds in a community where two-thirds of the population are Roma.
Stanislav Daniel of the European Roma Rights Center said of the wall:
“It has very high symbolic value. We could not object to the owners building their own wall and paying for it. But this is the first time that a municipality in Slovakia is using public money to protect the property of a few people.”
The village council first agreed to build the wall in 2008 after concerns were expressed over rising criminality in the village, primarily in the form of fruit theft by Roma children. The wall was supposed to have become part of a community complex including a kindergarten, primary school, and community center – which have yet to materialize.
The building of the wall has caused outrage among the Roma and human rights activists. Peter Kaleja, a twenty-one-year-old Roma man who lives with his wife and nineteen-month-old baby daughter in a shack made of mud and wood, said:
“Nobody told us that this was happening – they just came one day and started building . . . The mayor should not have spent that money on the wall, but should have built houses for us.”
The Kaleja’s live on €170 a month, and have no running water, gas, or sewage connection in their shack.
Cyril Revak, mayor of Ostrovany, said that the Roma shacks are built illegally on private land. He said: “The Roma are also citizens of this country. They deserve all the help they can get, but they must obey the law.” Revak remarked that the municipality was trying to purchase the land the Roma are living on, and planned to build houses for the Roma. He also said that the village had launched a program to help Roma children graduate from high school.
“I’m not a racist,” Revak said, “I know that there are many decent people living among our Roma. But on the other hand, I do not wish for anyone to go through hell everyday, like the people living in the neighbourhood of the settlement.”
Štefan Šarközi of the Institute of Roma Public Policy criticized the wall, which he said effectively categorized all of the residents of the settlement as thieves. Šarközi also said that the money would have been better spent on social workers and guards to prevent crime. He said:
“If someone steals, he or she should be punished for that, but we shouldn’t punish the whole community . . . Where does that leave those who live in the settlement behind the wall now and who never stole anything?”
There are roughly 350,000 Roma in Slovakia, which is approximately seven percent of the nation’s population. The Roma of Slovakia, and in the rest of Eastern Europe, have a shorter life expectancy, are more likely to be unemployed, and have a higher infant mortality than their non-Roma neighbors.
For more information, please see:
BBC – Slovakia’s separation barrier to keep out Roma – 9 March 2010
The Sofia Echo – Slovak town raises concrete wall around Roma ghetto – report – 18 February 2010
Times Online – Slovakian council in Ostrovany funds wall to isolate Roma community – 18 February 2010
The Slovak Spectator – A wall to keep out Roma – 26 October 2009
