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

 

By David Sophrin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

DUSSELDORF, Germany – Four members of a German terrorist cell were convicted for a foiled terrorist plot target United States soldiers and military installations that they had attempted to carry out in 2007.

German citizens Fritz Gelowicz, Daniel Schneider and Attila Selek were arrested, along with Adem Yilmaz of Turkey, in 2007.  Found in their possession at the time of arrest were military detonators and large quantities of hydrogen peroxide.  The cell had been under investigation by German law enforcement authorities for approximately nine months prior to their arrest.  It was their intention to target the U.S. Air Force base in Germany, Ramstein Air Base, along with a number of regional airports and restaurants.  Each defendant had trained at an Al Qaeda camp in northern Pakistan.  They also had joined the Islamic Jihad Union in 2006.

The defendants confessed to the charges leveled against them last year.  Gelowicz and Schneider were sentenced to twelve years in prison.  Yilmaz was given an eleven year sentence, while Selek was sentenced to five years.  Schneider was also was convicted for the attempted murder of one of the police officers who participated in the cell’s arrest.

Judge Ottmar Breidling, who handed down the sentences, commented that the four defendants wanted to carry out a “second September 11th”.  He described the plot as having the potential to have been a “monstrous bloodbath, designed to kill at least 150 people, mostly Americans.”

This failed plot constituted the first radical Islamic plot to be organized and prepared by German citizens.

For more information, please see:

CNN – 4 convicted over foiled German terror plot – 4 March 2010

THE NEW YORK TIMES – Germany Sentences 4 in Terror Case – 4 March 2010

VOICE OF AMERICA – 4 Muslims Convicted in Germany – 4 March 2010

UPI – Germany convicts home-grown militants – 4 March 2010

 By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe Desk

 

Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilder speaking to supporters in Almere. / Source: Robin Van Lonkhuijsen/AFP/Getty Images

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands – Wednesday’s local elections in the Netherlands brought major gains for Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam Freedom Party (PVV).  The PVV, which ran in two cities, came in first in election results in Almere, and second in in The Hague, where the Labour Party retained a slight lead.

Just days before the elections, Wilders said that a ban on Muslim headscarves in public places would be a non-negotiable facet of the PVV’s platform. In response, dozens of protesters, men and women, Muslim and non-Muslim, wore head scarves as they turned out to vote in Almere and The Hague.  

A third of the city of Almere, with its population of  190,000,  is of immigrant origin. Thirty-five-year old Kadriye Kacar, a Dutch-born resident of Almere of Turkish descent, said: “People are looking at us in a new way today as if they are thinking, ‘We won and you are leaving’.”

Wilders, visibly jubilant by election returns, told his supporters in Almere: “Today Almere and The Hague, tomorrow the whole Netherlands . . . We are going to win back the Netherlands from the leftist elite that believes in cuddling criminals, that believes in Islam and multiculturalism and the idiocy of development aid and the European superstate.”

Wilders has called for an immediate stop to immigration from Muslim countries, a ban on mosque construction, and the imposition of €1,000 a year tax on Muslim women who choose to wear headscarves. He has also likened the Qur’an to Mein Kampf, and wants Muslim immigrants deported.

Two weeks ago the ruling Christian Democrat-Labour coalition government collapsed after a disagreement about prolonging the Dutch military presence in Afghanistan beyond August.  The collapse of the ruling coalition prompted the local elections, which were the starting point of an intense three-month national campaign period which will end in June.  The latest opinion polls have indicated that the PVV is likely to take twenty-seven of the one hundred and fifty seats in the Dutch parliament.

Wilders has indicated that he is willing to make the compromises necessary to form partnerships with other parties, but it is yet unclear as to whether other parties will be willing to work with the extremist PVV.

The PVV gains reflect a drift to the right in Dutch politics which has been underway since the anti-immigration and anti-Islam politics of Pim Fortuyn, who was murdered during the 2002 Dutch national election campaign. Fortuyn’s assassin, animal rights activist Volkert van der Graaf, claimed that he had assassinated Fortuyn to prevent him from carrying out his anti-immigration agenda.

Agnes Kant of the Dutch Socialist Party stated that Wilders is a threat to samenleving, Dutch society’s history of allowing diverse ethnic and religious groups to live together. Wilders retorted:  “Agnes, thanks very much!”

Muslims now make up six percent, or one million, of the Netherland’s population of sixteen million.

For more information, please see:

BBC – Anti-Islamists gain in Dutch poll – 6 March 2010

The Sydney Morning Herald – Foothold for far right in Dutch local elections – 6 March 2010

Reuters – Dutch concerns over Islam, globalisation drive Wilders’ support – 5 March 2010

RNW – Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam party makes major gains – 4 March 2010

The Guardian – Geert Wilders’s party wins seat in Dutch elections – early results – 4 March 2010

Financial Times – Gains for far-right in Dutch elections – 3 March 2010

By Kenneth F. Hunt
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

STRASBOURG, France – The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on Wednesday March 3 that Poland discriminated against a homosexual man for denying him a right to succeed to an apartment in which he lived with his now deceased partner.

In accordance, the ECHR further prohibited Poland from discriminating against homosexual couples, despite a constitutional prohibition on homosexual marriage.

Piotr Kozak lived with a male partner from 1989 to 1998 in an apartment in Szczecin, Poland. The lease agreement was in the partner’s name.

When the partner died, Mr. Kozak applied to continuing living in the apartment, but his landlord refused to allow him to conclude a new lease agreement. The landlord denied the succession to the apartment despite Polish statutory law, which allows any “person who has lived in de facto cohabitation with the tenant” to succeed to the tenancy.

Mr. Kozak first brought suit in the Polish courts. However, Polish authorities courts and authorities consistently rejected the rights of homosexual couples.

Poland rejected Mr. Kozak’s claim on its understanding of Polish law on Article 18 of the Polish Constitution, which provides a definition of marriage as a “union of a man and a woman”. By analogy, the courts said that any cohabitation rights held in Poland apply only to heterosexual couples.

The European Court of Human Rights, however, rejected Poland’s arguments. The ECHR ruled instead that Poland violated Article 8 and Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which give European citizens the right to private and family life and prohibits discrimination, respectively.

The Court ruled that “de facto marital cohabitation” rights must be applied to persons in same-sex relationship the same way it is applied to heterosexual cohabitants. In so ruling, the ECHR stressed that the Convention was a “living instrument”.

Polish human rights groups praised the decision. Yga Kostrzewa, a spokeswoman for Lambda Warsaw, predicted that “[t]here will certainly be many more cases like this because there are a lot of laws and regulations that do not treat people equally.”

For more information, please see:

FINANCIAL TIMES – Homosexuals win legal victory against Poland – 3 March 2010

PINK PAPER – European Court of Human Rights: Polish legislation discriminates – 3 March 2010

RIA NOVOSTI – Strasbourg rules Polish gays can inherit property from partners – 3 March 2010

By David Sophrin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

MOSCOW, Russia – As part of a new anti-terrorism campaign, a Russian official has proposed that the entire population of the northern Caucasus region be fingerprinted.

Alexander Bastrykin, the Chairman of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office Investigation Committee, declared that the program would aid the federal government in investigating continuing acts of violence that originate in the Caucasus region.  According to Bastrykin, approximately five Russian hundred police officers and military personal have been killed in that region in recent years.  The program would be a “mandatory fingerprint registration for all citizens living in the North Caucasus region.”

Bastrykin’s proposal also called for the issuing of new registration licenses for all automobiles in the north Caucusus.

Outcry in response to the fingerprinting proposition was immediate.  Some critics believe that such a program would only inflame the mistrust that the population of that region already holds towards the Russian central government.  “This is going to antagonize people further in an already volatile region,” said Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch.  She also suggested that the program could violate the European Convention of Human Rights, to which Russia is a signatory nation.

Lyudmila Alekseyeva, a Russian human rights advocate, declared the proposal as ‘discriminatory.’  The population for whom fingerprinting would be required are almost entirely ethnicity Chechen.

A lawmaker in Chechnya was also quick to condemn the fingerprinting program.  Ziyad Sabsabi noted that, in addition to it possibly violating the presumed innocence of those Russian citizens who are fingerprinted, the program would also be ineffective.  Criminals, Sabsabi argued, could easily leave the region to avoid the fingerprinting process.  Additionally, if the purposes of the proposed program is to combat crime, then “[logically] all Russian nationals living in the Russian Federation should be subjected to fingerprinting.”

If successful in implementing this program in the northern Caucasus region, Bastrykin alluded to the possibility of expanding the program throughout Russia.

For more information, please see:

ITAR-TASS – Investigation Committee suggests total fingerprint/DNA registration in Russia – 5 March 2010

RADIO FREE EUROPE – Russian Official Suggests Fingerprinting entire North Caucasus – 5 March 2010

REUTERS – Russia proposes fingerprinting for volatile N.Caucasus – 5 March 2010

RIANOVISTI – Chechen MP decries fingerprinting plan as human rights violation – 4 March 2010