Currently a popular uprising is brewing in Slovakia amongst the Roma people. News footage has shown Roma
kids chanting "We want to eat" in front of a looted
shop and angry Romani throwing bottles and
cobblestones, the police firing teargas and using
water-canons and special units with submachine-guns
raiding homes of looters and rioters. The Slovak Roma have suffered for centuries and not nearly enough has changed in recent years. The institutional and popular racism and exclusion that the Roma suffer in Slovakia and throughout Central and Eastern Europe is unfathomable. Now, their commendable unrest and resistance is being repressed with state-sponsored violence and manipulation. Latest reports speak of door-to-door raids, systematic beatings and electric-shock torture (over 100 to date). Rioting started when Roma, already jobless, had unemployment benefits cut by 50%.

Please join a picket organized by Roma, Gypsies, Travellers and activists on Tuesday at Noon in front of the Slovak Embassy at 25 Kensington Palace Gardens, London, W8 4QY (very near Notting Hill Gate tube station) to show opposition to the treatment of the Roma by the Slovak state. (01206523528 mornings or 07963603111 for more info)