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Roma Party Indignant at SNS's "Miserable" Response to U.S. Report
Monday 15 March 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, March 15 (TASR) - The Roma Initiative of Slovakia (RIS) party agrees with a report drawn up by the U.S. State Department in which it claimed, inter alia, that Slovakia continues to struggle when it comes observing the human rights of its Roma minority, RIS chairman Alexander Patkolo told TASR on Monday.
At the same time, Patkolo said that RIS is "disgusted at a shocking racist response from the Slovak National Party (SNS)" and its first vice-chair Anna Belousovova.
Belousovova dismissed the U.S. State Department's claims as "completely off-base, as the problem is wholly the opposite." According to her, it is the Roma who to a large extent perpetrate crimes, steal from and attack decent people whose money goes to their social benefits. "If the U.S.A. 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.
Patkolo rejected Belousovova's allegations as a "miserable and gross assault on defenceless Roma that actually proves the report to be right."
According to Patkolo, 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 notice-board tenders, emissions and other tenders."
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