Burned girl a symbol of Roma hate and hope

[sailor_moonbeam]

By Andrew Tkach, CNN

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Roma Natalka Kudrikova lost 80 percent of her skin in hate attack
• Czech neo-Nazis planned attack to coincide with 120th anniversary of Hitler's birth
• In eastern Europe some far-right parties with anti-Roma rhetoric are gaining support
• Czech Prime Minister who lost family to Nazis says people forgetting lessons

Comments

[aviv_b]

Fuck this. What is wrong with people? Are humans never going to get beyond mindless hatred of the 'other.'

[sailor_moonbeam]

i sincerely hope so.

[mareeana]

This whole thing makes me sick. And it's astonishing how many people I've met who deny being racists but insist that they "don't like gypsies" and that's somehow a different thing. I mean, what the fuck? I should link this story to all of them, I bet they'd all agree that 3-year-old is a real piece of work because she's Roma. Ugh.

[threaded_ghost]

Ugh, I wish I could send this to Hollywood. I'm sick of the mystical, evil gypsy.

[sailor_moonbeam]

i think one of the worst of these is "thinner" but i'm sure there are worse ones out there (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117894/)

[omgangiepants]

"The Czech Republic should be for people who know how to behave. If the gypsies don't want to follow the rules, they're free to leave," she said.

sooooo setting babies on fire is following the rules eh

[sailor_moonbeam]

this made me cringe.

[paulnolan]

I'm fairly certain the words 'pikey', and maybe even chav, come from such sentiments. However, with both of those slurs (particularly chav), it's got a lot more to do with a class divide than anti-Roma bigotry.

Pikey's more related to Irish travellers, IIRC (and chav/charver has nothing to do with either, although the word comes from Romani)

[paulnolan]

It depends on who's the one calling a person a chav, in my experience. The word does get used by middle class types to denigrate anyone lower-class, but it really means the kind of nylon-clad, incoherent, violent little shitfucks who make up the majority of the population of my town.

[abee]

ENOUGH WITH THIS SHIT, HUMANITY. ENOUGH WITH THE HATRED, MY FUCKING GOODNESS.