Slovakia: Ultra-right also won Romani votes, intimidation alleged

Members of the Romani Union Party in Slovakia (Strana romské unie na Slovensku – SRÚS) are calling on newly-elected governor of the Banská Bystrice region Marián Kotleba to meet with them before Christmas and show them his plans for their community. The party wants to offer its own proposals for improving the situation of Romani people to him.   

Party chair František Tanko made the statement yesterday in Bratislava. He wants to meet both with the ultra-right Kotleba and with the Romani mayor of the village of Vaľkovňa, Rudolf Potoš.

The Slovak media reports that both Kotleba and Potoš are claiming to have won some Romani votes. "Romani apartment-dwellers are hoping Kotleba will not start investigating the leases they hold or throwing illegal occupants onto the street," Tanko said. 

News server Romovia.sme.sk reports that the SRÚS chair said he believes that just as Slovak President Ivan Gašparovič previously received him, Kotleba will do the same. He has not yet presented the party’s concrete proposals to the public, but supposedly will do so once Kotleba agrees to meet with his delegation.        

Tanko also claims the elections to the highest-level territorial units in the country were neither fair nor transparent. According to his information, Romani voters in many settlements became the victims of intimidation and politicians also bought their votes. 

The SRÚS chair said the most frequent threat made to Romani voters was that they would be removed from "activation work" programs. He mentioned the villages of Bystrá and Vranov nad Topľou as two places where such threats were made.

Tanko also believes Kotleba was elected thanks to Romani voters. He claims some Romani individuals supported the candidate but believes they did not realize who they were giving their vote to.

News server Čas.sk also reports that Romani people in several villages voted for the right-wing extremist. He was elected, for example, by the village of Vaľkovňa (Brezno district), which has Romani people in political leadership, led by 45-year-old Mayor Rudolf Pokoš. 

"I didn’t vote for [Kotleba] because I am in the Směr [Social Democratic] Party. According to the small-scale statistics we compiled, however, it seems Romani citizens did vote for him," the mayor said.  

Pokoš said he would definitely like to meet with the new governor. "I hope he will meet with me, not as a Roma, but as a mayor and he can’t tar everyone with the same brush. The media writes that he is an extremist and the Roma are afraid of that word. As governor, he must know what kinds of problems the villages in our region are suffering, there are a lot of them. That’s why I would like to meet with him," Pokoš said.  

Kotleba has been a leader of the Slovak ultra-right since approximately 2003, when he began to appear in public as a leader of the Slovak Solidarity (Slovenská pospolitost) organization, which he led until 2006. He stepped down after the Supreme Court dissolved the group for celebrating the wartime Fascist Slovak state.

Kotleba then established a shop with his brother called "KKK English Fashion" (KKK Anglická móda) where he sold brand name clothing favored by right-wing extremists. KKK is the abbreviation for the American racist movement Ku Klux Klan. 

Kotleba began to dedicate himself to politics again after 2009 when his friends took over the "Friends of Wine Party" (Strana přátel vína) and turned it into the "People’s Party – Our Slovakia" (Lidová strana – Naše Slovensko). His greatest success before this recent win was to receive 10 % of the vote in the regional elections in 2009. 

Kotleba is proud of his extremism, as he has shown through the name of his shop and by wearing uniforms reminiscent of the Fascist Hlinka Guard. He regularly organizes marches against Romani settlements and police have filed charges against him for his statements about "gypsy parasites." 

Kotleba was charged with promoting Fascism in 2006. Last year he purchased land near a Romani settlement in the village of Krásná Hůrka, which lies beneath a castle that was accidentally set on fire recently.

Seven homes in which Romani families are living were illegally built on that land. Kotleba has repeatedly threatened to have the houses bulldozed and is also known for wearing a pistol, including into court.