Following on from Daoloth’s Pit thread about the Slovakian government putting 400,000 ethnic Roma into ghettos, This is barbarism, there is more news about the treatment of Romani people in that country.
Now, I’m sure most of you know that ‘Gypsies’ were sterilized in Nazi Germany. Some of you may know that other countries also did this and that it didn’t stop until quite recently.
Sweden carried out forced sterilizations on Romani women (amongst others) until the early 1970’s, Slovakia was doing it until the late 1980’s / early 1990’s.
Or so it was thought.
Turns out that Slovakia is doing it again, as detailed in a report called Body and Soul - Forced Sterilization and other assaults on Roma Reproductive Freedom in Slovakia, which can be found here.
From the press release about this report:
and:
I’m unable to rant about this, for a few reasons:
[ul]
[li]At the moment, I’m too sad to be enraged.[/li][li]Nothing done to us suprises me anymore. Oh sure, I was taken aback when I read recently that, in Norway, the hunting of ‘Gypsies’ lasted until the 1920’s - But that was only because I thought it had stopped in the 19th century. Apart from that, it’s pretty much ‘same old, same old’ as far as I’m concerned: Kill us, hunt us, beat us, enslave us, steal our children (that stereotype has always been more ironic than offensive), force us from our homes, sterilize us - it’s all been done before.[/li][li]If I do start to rant, I really don’t think I’ll ever stop. Then I’d start hate. That’s not a good thing.[/li][/ul]
You know in this day that if this were happening to any other group of people, there would be more of an outcry in the media. Why not for Roma? I wonder if it is because Roma have never had their own nation. I know that in America they are not officially considered to be a minority group, and some Americans have no idea that they are indeed a ethnic group. Some will refer to gypsies and have no idea what it really means.
Ye bloody Gods!!! Even though you’d think I’d know better by now, I’m still amazed that some groups of individuals have the temerity to tell other groups of individuals they shouldn’t have the right to exist. I don’t believe in violence; I don’t believe in cruelty. I do believe in taking steps to prevent violence and cruelty, and right now taking a trip Slovakia with a good-sized baseball bat sounds like a good idea. I’ll wise up later.
This is disgusting.
I think that those responsible need remindind on the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:
[QUOTE]
Article 2
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
I just keep on thinking; I go through my day in my civilized little world and I have faith in people. And then something like this just shatters everything.
How can human beings act this way? How can people justify this to themselves in this day and age? No, wait, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know how the minds of people like that work. The corruption is just… hideous.
I would like to write a strongly worded email to the Slovakian government - will try to get details and post them here in a day or so, if anyone would care to join me.
