By Mikulas Jesensky, trans. Tomas Zahora

Krompachy, Slovakia, Korzar daily (http://korzar.sme.sk/c/4985060/romovia-z-krompach-sa-ukryvaju-v-lesoch-boja-sa-nasilia.html)

Between Friday and Sunday, the traffic signs on the main street of Krompachy will be changed to prohibit stopping and parking. Town citizens were informed of the changes several times on Friday via amplifiers of the town radio. The police is justifying their decision as a matter of ‘securing public order and protecting citizens’ property.’ On Sunday the opponents of ‘Roma terror’ will march from the train station to the town hall on the main street.

Asylum in the forests

The Roma are concerned about violence. Entire families are leaving their homes, seeking asylum in the surrounding forests. Jan Diro, the owner of a nicely fixed up house in Druzstevna neighborhood, is among them, leaving town with his wife and seven children. He returned back on Friday morning to check if everything is all right, to wash and get supplies of drinking water. They have just spent their second night in the forest.

‘The deputy mayor was here, so were the police. They told us it would be better to leave. Is it normal according to you for a well-behaved man to have to leave their home?’ asks the 50-year-old man.

Jan Diro coordinates Roma projects in the Roma settlement. Locals respect him as their vajda. What he says is sacred.

‘It would be enough to have two Roma patrols and there would be peace. Drugged children would certainly not wander around here. We would take care of the parents on the spot.’

The men surrounding him nod in agreement. ‘When parents don’t take care of their parents, they need to be punished,’ Jozef Pokuta adds. He doesn’t understand why families who are behaved well even in poverty must suffer because of them. And they do not at all understand the supporters of Kotleba (anti-Roma extremist) who want to take care of the Roma without much ado on the spot. ‘What do they want? A civil war?’

Apartheid

Only a few families remain in Stará Maša settlement. Alžbeta Dirdová and her five children decided not to leave their one-room cottage: ‘What happens, happens. I haven’t done anything to anyone. What should I be afraid of?’

Whites live at Stará Maša as well. Julián Miča is passing a group of Roma on a bicycle. The sixty-five-year-old man has lived here since childhood. His wife is Roma. ‘You can’t live with these. They don’t leave you alone …’

‘What, did someone hurt you?’ a Roma in a white t-shirt stretched over a massive body, asks.

The man on the bicycle just waves his hand and leaves.

The Roma living in Stará Maša do have their resentments when it comes to whites. They claim there are pubs and stores in Krompachy that will not serve the Roma. They prefer not to go to those. ‘The whites go to their pubs and our people to their own,’ a girl with little semblance to a Roma, says. She knows from her own experience—she works in one of the restaurants.

‘They all put us in the same bag. We are thieves, murderers, we do not respect anyone they say. It is not true,’ Peter Žalúdek says. The thirty-nine-year-old father of three children allegedly used to go to the Czech Republic as seasonal worker; for the last few years he has been cleaning the town as part of town social services. ‘I got 1600 crowns (USD 76, Euro 53). Would you be able to live on that? I won’t find normal work as a Roma even if I cut myself to pieces.’

State debts

There are an estimated 1800 Roma out of Krompachy’s population of 8600. Roughly one half of those consists of those considered ‘unadjustable.’

‘Those who had to live with them will agree with Kotleba,’ says Daniel Ferko. The white majority of Krompachy is concerned about the increase of criminal activity, drug abuse among children and the number of teen pregnancies and births. ‘Finally someone is saying openly that the problem is here and we need to take it seriously.’

The mayor, Iveta Rušinová, warned the government deputy leader Dusan Čaplovič in an open letter of the ‘inescapable situation.’ She did not receive a response and left for a scheduled vacation. Čaplovič visited Krompachy in the meanwhile. He spoke of increasing police numbers in problem areas, supporting the project of hiring people in city maintenance, and changes in social support.

‘Wherever I go people ask: How can you live there? I don’t think we are worse off than in other towns or villages with large Roma communities. The difference is that we pointed to the problem,’ says deputy mayor Imrich Holečko.

Apart from a number of projects aimed at blunting the sharp edges of cohabitation between the majority and minority, the town hall also self-finances the project of hiring people in city maintenance and social work. The government’s debt to the town hall of 33000 Euro (c. one million Slovak Crowns) in salaries and other expenses has only been addressed, and first payment delivered, after the demonstration of anti-Roma extremists in Šarišské Michaľany which has been broken up by the police.

Whatever is in store for the citizens of Krompachy this coming Saturday?