Further attacks against Gypsies in EU countries

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

In Eastern Slovakia Roma fled city

The extreme right organization “Slovenská pospolitost” was holding another apparently unauthorized Anti-Roma-Rally in the small Eastern Slovakian town of Krompachy in order to demonstrate against the so-called “Gypsy criminality”.

According to media reports the majority of the Gypsies living in the municipality left town out of fear of attacks and many fled already in the early hours of the morning into the forests. Many of the Slovak residents of the town, on the other hand, welcomed the Neo-Nazi Rally with open arms, so reports the Slovak news agency TASR. A large contingent of riot police prevented the feared attacks against Gypsies of the town. For Tuesday, August 25, a further rally is expected in the town of Nové Zámky.

Hungarian right-wing calling for solidarity against Roma

The Hungarian right-wing extremist are calling on neighboring countries of the Hungarian and Slovaks peoples to stand with them in “solidarity” against the Roma minority.

Both countries, they say, have to battle the same problems, and here especially the “Roma Problem”, said Csanád Szegedi, the Vice-President of the right-wing Jobbik party.

In previous months there have been a number of of racists demonstrations in the Gypsy quarters by the Hungarian right-wing extremists, primarily of the “Hungarian Guard” that have caused great concern amongst the Romani People in Hungary and abroad.

Despite the fact that the “Guard” has been officially banned by the authorities they continue to operate and have even meanwhile change the name thus trying to thwart the authorities' attempt to disband them.

It has been officially disbanded by court order but nevertheless the paramilitary organization of the “Hungarian Guard” continues to operate.

And where are the bodies of the European Union? Nowhere to be seen or heard and then again, it is all hot air and talk anyway even if they do say something. Action is what is needed.

© 2009
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Anti-Gypsyism in Nottinghamshire

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

RAG - RESIDENTS AGAINST GYPSIES

Dear Editor,

You will be pleased to know that we are recruiting to rid our area of gypsies once and for all. Our members will be armed with catapults (fifteen and counting), to pepper their beloved caravans. We are sick to the back teeth of filth they leave and the thieving they do from our properties. Police seem reluctant to move them on. This we will do. Our aim is not to injure - only to cause havoc. New members welcome.

Yours Sec.
RAG.

The above is a letter received by the Editor of the Worksop Guardian and even though – or maybe because – the writer of the letter chose to stay anonymous this letter smacks of incitement not just to racial hatred but in fact of incitement to violence against property and persons based on Race.

It must be noted that the writer, who remained so nicely anonymous, stated that “our members will be armed with catapults (fifteen and counting), to pepper their beloved caravans” and the claim that their aim is not to cause injury but only havoc is a load of something not to be named, and it is hard to think that they actually believe their own words.

While we have so far only seen actions like that in countries of the former Soviet Bloc that are now part of the European Union this ugly specter of Nazism now seems to be arriving in the Yorshire Dales even and certainly is rather a worrying thing.

Only recently did we have issues of Anti-Gypsyism in Belfast, in Ulster (aka Northern Ireland) against families of the Romani Roma Gypsy community and while that could have, to some degree, have been attributed to the sectarianism that used to be prevalent in Ulster, to find this in small market towns in the Yorkshire Dales is rather a different kettle of fish altogether and should open the eyes of all those people that do not wish to see this kind of violence in Britain.

I have said many a times that I will be the first to admit that some of our community and especially many of those falsely called Gypsies though who are really not but live a life on the road, do leave rubbish and other things not to be mentioned not all of our community are the same and we, like the non-Gypsy community have good and bad people.

Europe, including the UK now, if would seem, is beginning more and more to look like Europe of 1939 than of 2009 with the way that Anti-Gypsyism is on the rise. Nazi-Fascism is rearing its ugly head once again an no one seems prepared to stand up against it.

Then again, we, the Gypsy, are used to this for we are not Jews or Blacks and hence no one cares. All the authorities do, in Britain and abroad, is to talk a lot and issue this and that statement against such racial violence; statements they often do not seem to believe in themselves. This could not and would not happen were it Jews or others thus threatened. Alas, it is just, as many see it, Dirty Gyppos, and hence the silence.

Now is the time for all to stand against this ugly specter of Nazism once again so that never again will things that haunted Europe in the 1930s and 1940s do so again.

We, the Romani-Gypsy, too, must stand up together and fight this menace, though not necessarily with their own weapons but on a different level and the best level is to educate the Gadje that we are decent peoples, despite what they think and believe. It takes two to tango, as they say, and maybe it is time we, as a People, as a Community, were prepared to address the concerns of the Gadje. What say you?

Ourselves Alone!

© 2009
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Gypsy woman shot dead in North-East Hungary

One day after the 65th anniversary of the extermination of the Gypsy camp at Auschwitz murder on another Gypsy committed in Hungary

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Budapest, August 3, 2009 – A Romani woman was shot dead and her 13-year-old daughter was seriously injured in Kisleta in North-Eastern Hungary early on Monday, August 3, 2009, just one day after the 65th anniversary of the Romani Holocaust, according to information from the town's local government.

The two Gypsy women were attacked in a house on the outskirts of the town, said a spokesman from the municipality.

Police are investigating the scene, said local police spokeswoman Rita Fedor.

Thugs are running riot in so many countries of the European Union against Gypsies and murder, brutal attacks and intimidations are a daily occurrences with the EU parliament and the Council of Europe just giving lip service and doing nothing.

It seems to be time that we, the Romani People, did something ourselves and while I know that we are then going to be held up as the villains it would appear there to be no other choice.

We get the nice talk from many of the agencies that are supposedly by the People for the People but in fact seem to be doing nothing either when it comes to real action. Hunger strikes don't get us nowhere, I would like to add, and neither did it get the Macedonian Roma in Northrhine-Westfalia anywhere in the 1990s. Talking shops do not get us anywhere either. What we need is grassroots organizations of grassroots Rom, and when I say here Rom I refer to Sinti, Roma, Kale; all those that are Romani. But that is what we sorely lack.

So, what now? Where do we go form here? Answers on a postcard please...

© 2009
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