BHHRG

It is difficult to say how many Roma live in Slovakia – the number has been put at c.400,000.[1] Slovak government representatives claim that only 30% live in miserable conditions while the remaining 70% - the majority - is fully integrated into normal Slovak life. However, in conversations with BHHRG, some Roma estimated that barely 10% of their population was, in fact, living what might be called a ‘normal’ life. Many Roma families have upward of four children and BHHRG met people with as many as eight young mouths to feed. Nowadays, all these children are likely to live into adulthood – unlike in the past - as the Slovak authorities operate a full vaccination programme within the Roma communities.[2] However, BHHRG noted several examples of children and young people with severe birth defects while the toil associated with endless childbirth and rampant poverty means that Roma women do not live to a great age. BHHRG saw no elderly women – though many who were prematurely aged - during their visits to the Roma settlements in Eastern Slovakia.
Having a large family is the cultural norm for Roma families. It has also been the channel for receiving state funding. Even in Communist times allowances were paid for each extra child and that policy has continued until the recent changes were made. The new legislation will pay a flat rate sum to the unemployed of Sk. 1450 (€35.80) per person per month which the state will only augment for people joining a workfare programme put in place by local villages and municipalities which pays Sk.1500 per month for 15 hours work per week (60 hours per month). The change in the law has meant that some families have seen their incomes halved. In Richnava a settlement of 1400 Roma near Krumpachy a mother of 5 said that benefits amounting to SK.13,000 have now been reduced to Sk. 7,000. The village doesn’t have money and there are 220 people there already who need a job.
This change in the law has plunged the most vulnerable sections of the Roma in Slovakia into ever deeper poverty. Although the original bill setting out the new rules was introduced into the Slovak parliament in 2002, most Roma interviewed told BHHRG repeatedly that no warning had been given about the changes. However, one man in Lunik IX said the new arrangements were known a month before they came into effect. Different accounts (such as these) of the timetable leading up to the imposition of the new rules also applied to the amounts of money involved and BHHRG found it difficult to pin down exactly the sums although there is no disputing the fact that a family of 7, will see their income drop by half. It should be pointed out that access to the Slovak health system for operations, for example, now has to be paid for, as does a run-of-the-mill visit to the doctor. Roma also pointed out that they lacked money to pay for their children’s clothes and other needs at school.
Such people are now left to the vagaries of local mayors who receive funding from central government in Bratislava to pay them to do community work, such as sweeping the streets. It should be pointed out that the workfare programme is also intended to mop up unemployed Slovaks of which there are estimated to be between 60% and 70% in Eastern Slovakia. Although most Roma communities in Slovakia accepted the changes sullenly, but peacefully, violence broke out in several communities, mainly east of Košice and seems to have taken the form of breaking into local supermarkets and stealing food. Both the local police and some army units were briefly deployed to put down the violence and protect local communities. Photographs from the scene show sinister-looking men in black balaclavas dispersing the crowds. By the time BHHRG visited there had been no further incidents but several people arrested at the time were still in custody.
The Group’s visited 6 settlements which contained at least 12,000 people. Most small towns and villages in the Spiš region have some kind of Roma settlement in their vicinities. In Eastern Slovakia, towards the Ukrainian and Hungarian borders, the settlement pattern seemed to be more sporadic. Outside Košice in Lunik IX, BHHRG was told that there were families with 8 children and the Group met women who were expecting their fifth or even sixth child. Certainly, there seemed to be hundreds of small children and babies in all the places visited.
All the settlements visited by BHHRG in March 2004 ranged from the horrible to the truly appalling. A typical Roma village in Eastern Slovakia displays the following characteristics: mud roads which turn into filthy, squelching swamps during the winter months in and around which throng naked children and scrawny, mongrel dogs. Large piles of rubbish remain uncollected – sometimes being set alight, presumably as a form of primitive garbage disposal. The worst place visited by BHHRG was situated near the village of Rudnany where people were housed in a series of dilapidated buildings that once belonged to a local mine. According to the inhabitants, many of the buildings were on the point of collapse.[3] Only those Roma living in housing developments like Lunik IX and in Čierna nad Tisou near the Hungarian border enjoy the luxury of a paved road although this does not necessarily improve the standard of living much as the fabric of the buildings is in poor shape and panes of glass and whole window frames are regularly removed from blocks of flats, particularly from the stair wells.
The electricity supply to most Roma settlements is sporadic and in some cases non-existent. The settlement of Letanovce outside Spišsky Štrvtok has no electricity at all. In Trhovište near the Ukrainian border the supply had been cut off due to non-payment of bills and people were cooking on primus stoves in the dark when BHHRG visited. Nowhere visited was connected to the mains gas supply so heating depends on gathering (and stealing) wood for fires. Collecting and chopping wood is an almost fulltime occupation for many Roma.
Most places had no running water. At the settlement at Trhovište there was an ancient well that served a settlement of over 500 people. Outside Letanovce a hand-operated pump was the only supply of clean water for over 600 people. Many places were difficult to reach and Roma could often be seen walking along the main road to their to their homes often situated far away from populated centres.
No one had a proper job although some had now signed up for the new work fare programme that had accompanied the changes in benefit payments. Driving east BHHRG saw groups of Roma cleaning the streets and in Trhovište a group of men equipped with new spades were completing their day’s task – women do not seem to be taking part in the scheme due, no doubt, to the weight of child care. However, the amount of work available depends on the local mayor and it is hard to see it adding up to very much. At the time of BHHRG’s visit streets were still caked with dirty piles of snow but when that has been cleaned away, what next? Also, the project is directed at all unemployed Slovaks, not only Roma.
The question as to whether or not large numbers of Roma will leave Slovakia for other EU destinations after 1st May is more complicated. In Rodnany several young and middle aged men had already worked as labourers in the Czech Republic and, on entry into the EU, many would like to return on a more formal basis as it enables them to remain close to their families. Although the majority of those spoken to said they would like to leave if they could (and who could blame them) BHHRG did not get the impression that many of them had made any concrete plans as to how or where they might go.
Apart from the Czech Republic, Belgium and Finland were also named as possible destinations. In fact, several hundred Roma were reported to have arrived in Finland in the early months of 2004 seeking political asylum.[4] However, in Trhovište a large group of Roma were adamant that they would like to go to the UK. They even said that they “would like Tony Blair to come here” – an unlikely eventuality.
Violence had broken out in this village when the changes in social security payments were announced and the local state-run supermarket had been attacked. Even today, as tensions have reduced, a police patrol is stationed outside the shop. The group of Roma men interviewed by BHHRG outside their settlement were vocal, well-informed and angry – better put together in many ways than the more supine communities the Group encountered elsewhere. With regular flights soon to leave Košice for Western European destinations, the possibility of escape for those well-organised enough to plan their departure may be irresistible. Few tears would be shed in Bratislava if large numbers of Roma were to leave Eastern Slovakia.
Although the British press has quoted Roma saying that they don’t want to leave Slovakia, only one person in Čierna nad Tisou - said that he did not see why he should leave his home and go abroad. As this man was the local ‘trusty’ who organized the settlement’s work fare programme it is probably understandable that he should parrot what is the party line. No doubt, the Slovak government doesn’t want to alarm its new European partners in the run up to EU accession on 1st May.