October 8th, 1998
08-10-1998
A court in the South Bohemian town of Pisek passed jail
sentences on Thursday to three skinheads convicted of causing
the drowning death three five years ago of the Roma teenager
Tibor Danihel.The defendants were sent to jail for between eight and a half
and seven years.
Tibor Danihel, who could not swim, was driven into a cold
river in an incident in which a group of skinheads rounded up
Romany youths on a river island not far from the centre of
Pisek in September 1993.
Resulting from the large number of Romas who have been leaving
Slovakia to seek asylum in Britain, Slovak citizens will be
needing visas, Britain announced on wednesday. Czech citizens
should have nothing to worry about, it added since the number of
Czech immigrants has not been that high.
An official announcement and explanation of the visa regulation
which came into effect at one minute past midnight, British time,
on Thursday morning, was made during a press conference at the
British Embassy in Prague. Cesky Rozhlas was there, and this is
what was said:
Poslech: RealAudio ~ Download
But there are some Roma representatives who believe that this
development clearly proves that Roma are subjected to racism and
discrimination. A visa introduction is a punishment to all
Slovaks and not just to Roma so it could be an indirect
message saying "stop discriminating and we will withdraw the
visa requiry".
During an interview with Mr. Roman Kristov, the office manager of
the Helsinki Citizen's Assembly, he gave us an insight of his
opinion on this development:
Poslech: RealAudio ~ Download
Britain itself is so overwhelmed by the suddenly increased
number of asylum-seekers that it has to set up special forces
who would be in charge of identifying suspicious people to
avoid the evasion of immigration control. In August alone, the
number of asylum applicants from Slovakia came to 846. In
September 701 more Slovaks applied. These are numbers that
Britain used to be faced with for the period of a whole year,
now they come in monthly.
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