VZCZCXRO0487
PP RUEHAG RUEHAST RUEHDA RUEHDBU RUEHDF RUEHFL RUEHIK RUEHKW RUEHLA
RUEHLN RUEHLZ RUEHNP RUEHPOD RUEHROV RUEHSK RUEHSR RUEHVK RUEHYG
DE RUEHSL #0353 2241042
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P R 121042Z AUG 09
FM AMEMBASSY BRATISLAVA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 0103
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUEHSL/AMEMBASSY BRATISLAVA 0134

UNCLAS BRATISLAVA 000353 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM LO
SUBJECT: GYPSY TERROR PROVOKES MORE DEBATE THAN SOUL-SEARCHING 
 
¶1. (U) Summary. An August 8 protest against "Gypsy Terror" in 
eastern Slovakia has opened a rift in Slovakia's nationalist 
movement and shown once-again that - where Slovakia's large and 
impoverished Roma community is concerned - even the 
"responsible" parliamentary parties face a delicate balancing 
act between recognizing voters legitimate fears about crime and 
giving credence to ingrained racial prejudices. (End summary.) 
 
¶2. (U) Approximately 200 people who gathered to protest what 
they called "Gypsy terror" in the eastern Slovak village of 
Sarisske Michalany on Saturday, August 8. According to the 
website of Slovenska pospolitost (Slovak Fellowship, a far-right 
civic organization) the protest was in reaction to attacks by 
members of the Roma minority on local residents and the 
government's failure to protect Slovak citizens and the Slovak 
nation from "Gypsy terror". (In the past year individual Roma 
from a nearby settlement murdered a shopkeeper and seriously 
injured a pensioner in the village. In both cases the assailants 
have been detained and remain in prison.) The protesters threw 
rocks and bottles after police detained three leaders of 
Slovenska Pospolitost for organizing a mass-gathering without a 
permit. In the ensuing action, police detained approximately 30 
people, all of whom were released within hours. Although 
Slovenska Pospolitost promoted the gathering through its web 
page, the organization insists it did not "organize" the 
protest. Approximately 25 sympathizers of the Czech far-right 
Worker's Party (Delnickej strana) and 10 Hungarian skin-heads 
joined the protest. 
 
¶3. (U) Inhabitants of the village were generally supportive of 
the protesters and a petition drive has begun to have the Mayor 
- who worked closely with police - removed from office for his 
failure to deal with Roma from the nearby settlement.  Several 
local residents were quoted in media reports saying they have 
nothing against Roma per se, but that they live in fear of those 
Roma from the nearby settlement who regularly commit crimes 
against property and display violence while high on glues and 
solvents. 
 
¶4. (SBU) Reactions from political parties followed a mostly 
predictable line. Interior Minister Robert Kalinak and Deputy 
Prime Minister for Minorities Dusan Caplovic, both from the 
ruling Smer party, defended the police action as appropriate. 
The co-ruling Slovak National Party (SNS) repudiated any act of 
violence against a Slovak citizen and said criminals must be 
dealt with no matter the color of their skin. MP Jan Kovarcik of 
the co-ruling HZDS criticized the police intervention for having 
made heroes of the extremists. (Comment. Kovarcik has called on 
Kalinak to resign several times recently for his "failures" with 
respect to the police. Most pundits interpret his criticism as 
related to HzDS weak position in the coalition in the final 
months before elections must be called. End comment.) Opposition 
MP Vladimir Palko, head of the Conservative Democrats of 
Slovakia (KDS) and a former Interior Minister, proposed that 
statistics on crimes committed by the Roma should be regularly 
released so that police and policy makers can more effectively 
tackle the problem and gauge results. Palko warned that decent 
people suffer from crime at the hands of Roma and their 
legitimate concerns should not be only the province of extreme 
parties. 
 
¶5. (U) Before he was detained, Slovenska Pospolitost's nominal 
leader, Marian Kotleba, called on his followers "to prevent the 
further mutilation of our people by the Gypsy hordes," and 
criticized the SNS for failing to protect the Slovak nation 
while it has been in government for the past three years. 
Kotleba called for the creation of a new nationally-oriented 
party to challenge SNS and protect the Slovak people. (In 2002, 
when nationalist voters were divided between two parties, SNS 
failed to win more than 5 percent of votes and was out of 
Parliament for four years.) 
 
¶6. (U) Slovenska pospolitost was originally formed as a 
nationalist party in 2005, but became a civic organization in 
2006 after the Supreme Court declared it's political objectives 
to be in contravention of the Slovak constitution and dissolved 
it. It is the only time the Slovak judiciary has dissolved a 
political party. In November 2008, Kalinak's Interior Ministry 
moved to dissolve the civic association Slovenska pospolitost, 
but at the beginning of July, the Supreme Court canceled the 
move, ruling the Interior Ministry dissolved the association 
without a valid legal reason. Kalinak has promised to study the 
decision and find a way to enforce Slovenska pospolitost's 
dissolution as soon as possible. 
 
EDDINS