On the Current Situation in the Sluknovska Region

Update from the Czech Brethren on the Roma

Perhaps you have read of the unrest in our region or have seen the pictures in the news of the violent clashes between police and demonstrators in Varnsdorf on September 10, 2011.
It is difficult for me to describe what is going on here, even when we are constantly talking about it, discussing it, thinking about it, and the newspapers are full of it. The information is too contradictory; what we are experiencing is too unreal.

The original cause was a nighttime fight between youth on August 21 here in Rumburk. Twenty Roma followed four “whites” to the hallway to their apartment, by breaking through a door and seriously injured one of the others. The official version, according to the leader of the Rumburk police, is that the Roma youth conducted a “massacre” on racial grounds. The Roma version is that there were previous disagreements over drugs and an attack by the “whites” on one of the Roma, but these claims never made it into the media.

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