Roma family murdered by off-duty cop in Slovakia

[jettakd]

tw for racism, mentions of suicide

By Beata Balogová

From The Slovak Spectator

Milan Juhász, a 51-year-old policeman, did not go to work Saturday, June 16. Instead, he took an illegally held gun and headed to Komárňanská street in Hurbanovo, a small town in southern Slovakia

Comments

[13chapters]

I blogged about this today. So incredibly fucked up, but...just really not that surprising. I am so glad I am not in Peace Corps anymore, because I had to be diplomatic about all the racism against Romani that I saw on a daily basis.

I really really love Eastern Europe but the amount of totally blatant and socially acceptable racism is mindboggling, destructive on both the personal and societal levels, and it needs to fucking be addressed. Like, REALLY addressed. The Decade of Roma Inclusion has done fuck-all, to the shame of Europe as a whole.

I can't wait for some European to show up and say that Americans are too concerned with race and that Europeans are all above discussions of racism. Of course it's not necessary to discuss when it is COMMON OPINION that treating Romani like shit doesn't qualify as racism (which is totally bad and only happens in other countries) because "they really are dirty stupid lazy thieves".

UGHHHHHH.

[little_rachael]

Jesus.

[pleasure_past]

What can one do to help? Are there trustworthy organizations--in Europe or out of Europe--devoted to fighting for Roma rights?

[13chapters]

There is the European Roma Rights Centre, for one. General human rights organizations like Amnesty International also have Romani rights projects. I actually used to see PSAs promoting equal rights for Romani on Bulgarian TV that were funded by Save the Children. PSAs may seem like weaksauce, but personally I was very pleasantly surprised to see something like that on TV, and I hope it had a positive effect.

There are a lot of small regional organizations doing things on the local level, but tbh I'm not sure if any of the organizations I'm familiar with have websites in English...if they have websites at all.

[wathsalive]

This is just terrible. That poor family. The kind of culture that trivializes or outright glorifies racism against Roma needs to die in a fire.

[yamamanama]

It's like Europe's moving back in time.

[jettakd]

More like stuck in time in this case. The Roma have always invariably been hated, it's why there is little to no mentions of them being victims of the Holocaust until recently. No one cared that they died :(