Anti-Roma wall through Slovak village provokes outcry
25th November 2009
“It’s discrimination, the mayor should have used the money to build houses for us instead,” Kucharova, a 25-year-old Roma, said.
Note the preferred use of public money on the part of an alleged victim.
“The fence doesn’t prevent the Roma from coming to the village,” he said. “It just prevents them from entering private gardens and stealing. It wasn’t just petty theft, especially in autumn.
“People don’t grow vegetables in their gardens any more, there’s no use – everything gets stolen.”
Note that there was a time – presumably before the Roma arrived – when there wasn’t a theft problem. Now there is. How are public authorities supposed to handle that? This would seem a minimally-invasive action, to borrow a medical phrase.
“The children have been stealing apples from the gardens but what can we do – they are just children,” admitted the 21-year-old Roma mother of one.
Do other, non-Roma children have the same problem?