14.04.2009

Nine miserable and racist policemen

When I knew it, I did not believe it. I never thought that could be true. Above all, because I had already heard that story, on several occasions, when I was young. Some Gypsies told me that in Franco’s regime, the road Civil Guard, —the same about which Federico García Lorca talked about so strongly and dramatically— tormented the poor Gypsies they met on Spain’s paths and fields forcing them to beat each other. They aimed their carbines at them or they pushed them with their weapons so that they would hit each other, brothers against brothers, brothers-in-law against brothers-in-law or sons-in-law against in-laws. That was the bleeding spectacle that soulless men, in the bodies of which there was not even a gram of humanity, kept for themselves.

 

—Forgive me, brother —they told each other, swallowing their tears and demoralized a cause of the pain and impotence.

 

—Harder, harder! —shouted those demons pushing those poor unfortunates with their rifles to achieve that they beat each other harder and more violently.

 

I repeat that I thought this scene belonged to my youth memories and nothing similar could happen after so many years. But truth is much more constant and dramatic of what our wishes could be. It happened in Slovakia, a Central European country that became a member of the European Union in the last enlargement. In a police station of Kosice, on the east of Slovakia, nine individuals, nine beasts that unworthily dress the police uniform and that belong to their country’s security services, locked six Gypsy children in a room of the police station and committed all kind of offences with them.

Under terrifying cries and terrible menaces, they forced them to beat each other and then they forced them to take their clothes off and to kiss each other while some dogs barked at them menacingly. Some of the children were even bit by the dogs.

Thank God these events will not remain without punishment. A relative of one of the policemen recorded the facts and could not repress the noble wish of reporting the torment infringed to the Gypsy children and sent the film to the journalist Tom Nicholson of Bratislava’s “SME” journal.

Right now we know that the Home Secretary, Robert Kalinak, has already taken part and that he has even stated that at least seven of the policemen that participated on the “amusement” will be dismissed.

We, from the International Romaní Union, are going to urge the slovakian authorities, the Parliament and the European Commission to achieve that those unworthy public order agents —what a sarcasm!— are not only dismissed but so as that they are also prosecuted and so as that the judicial authorities are the ones to determine the punishment that, according the justice, corresponds them which should, at least, the definitive expulsion from their country’s police force.

 

Sastipen thaj mestipen.

Salud y libertad.

 

JUAN DE DIOS RAMÍREZ-HEREDIA

President de Unión Romaní

 

We do not recommend it, but if you wish to see the video that shows those indescribable acts, you can visit the video section at our website.

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