Slovakia Stunned by Rampaging Gunman (Targeting Roma/Gypsies)

[pampango]

Source: New York Times

A man armed with a submachine gun and two handguns killed six members of a Roma family in their apartment house in the Slovak capital, Bratislava, on Monday, and then, firing wildly as he tried to evade the police surrounding the building, killed another person and wounded 15 more before fatally shooting himself, police and government officials said.

The killings shook the country and resonated with Europe’s growing xenophobia against Roma, or Gypsies.

In a video interview with the victims’ family members posted on the Web site of SME, a leading Slovak daily, one young Roma woman, identifying herself as a granddaughter of one of those killed, said she believed the crime had been fueled by racism. “He’d always been very hostile to colored people and hated us,” she said. “He picked on us all the time.”

In France, French police in recent weeks have been dismantling Roma camps and deporting Roma living illegally in France to Bulgaria and Romania, prompting accusations of ethnic discrimination. Clashes with Roma have also been intensifying in other countries in Eastern Europe and in Italy. In Hungary, at least seven Roma have been killed in the last two and a half years, and Roma leaders have counted about 30 firebomb attacks.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/world/europe/31slovak.html?src=mv

[greiner3]

1. “He’d always been very hostile to colored people and hated us,”

Wonder what his freeper name is.

[harmonicon]

2. I've never been to Slovakia...

but I've spent a fair amount of time near the border in CZ, and some of the racist comments I've heard there are staggering. Otherwise sane-seeming people can come out with the most vile racist crap I've ever heard in my life. This is no surprise, really... unfortunate as it may be.

[mod mom]

3. I have been to Slovakia and the same type of vile racist crap can be found

right here, unfortunately.

[entanglement]

4. Can European "leaders" who incite these crimes be arrested the next time they set foot on US soil?

Or the soil of any other civilized nation, like the UK? IANAL, but surely there has to be some way to hold those who incite murder and violence against minority groups responsible?

[JustAnotherGen]

5. I'd like to think so

But we'd be total hypocrites. I think Rumsfeld is still wanted by Germany and we can't even get war crimes charges against Cheney and Bush.

And then there's Red Summer, Rosewood massacre, etc. etc.


I don't mean to be picking at you and I'm honestly not - I just don't think we are the right country, at the right time, to be pointing fingers at anyone. *sigh*