‘The solution to the Gypsy question is an easy one: you need a small yard and a big whip.' These are the words of Ján Slota, president of the Slovak National Party (SNS), part of Slovakia's ruling coalition. They were spoken in 2006 just as a new government was being formed on the heels of national elections. Now, Mr Slota, famed for his anti-Hungarian sentiment, is ‘seriously concerned' about the attacks and murders suffered by Hungary's Roma. He believes the spirit of a recent anti-Gypsy, neo-Nazi incident in the eastern Slovakian village of Šarišské Michal'any (Szentmihályfalva) originated in Hungary.

The pogrom atmosphere currently gripping Slovakia could not have come at a worse time for the country's government. It was on 8 August that 250 members of the Slovak Togetherness (SP) movement gathered to protest against ‘the Gypsy terror'. The demonstration was broken up by a riot squad as locals rebuked police officers with shouts of ‘Why are you protecting the killers?' among other things. Some of the people living in the area welcomed the SP, saying ‘There's finally somebody to create order and protect us from the Gypsies'. The anger of the locals was later directed at the mayor, who had provided support for the police, with many demanding his resignation in a petition. The incident had been sparked by two young Roma beating a 65-year-old man so badly that he went blind in one eye.

The events have critically undermined the Slovak government's anti-Hungarian strategy, which is being used by politicians in Bratislava (Pozsony) to parry the blow of a demonstration held in Budapest against a Slovak law due to come into force on 1 September that restricts the use of Hungarian. It is also being used to forestall reactions from international organisations - which are still mild but expected to gain strength with the start of the political season. This is all being done in an effort to bring the matter of Hungary's anti-Roma attacks onto the European political stage. Juraj Horváth, chair of the Slovak parliament's foreign affairs committee, has spoken outright of the Balkanisation of Hungary, where the ‘systematic physical annihilation' of Gypsies is underway.

The mention of Hungary's extremes and the exaggerated focus on the role of the Hungarian Guard provide some very strong ammunition, which the Slovak government have used to justify the deterioration of bilateral relations, while they have also stressed that their household was in order and such things could certainly never happen there. This is why the Slovak interior ministry put a halt to the SP's operations on 12 November of last year, three days before a Hungarian-Slovak summit meeting in the divided border town of Komarnó-Komárom. The ministry justified the decision on the grounds of national, ethnic, religious and political hatemongering. And it was meant to strengthen Slovak PM Robert Fico's negotiating position. Of course, he did not hesitate to play oneupmanship at the meeting by contrasting his country's ban with the Hungarian Guard's ongoing, legally sanctioned activities.

Several weeks ago, however, the Slovak supreme court struck down the interior ministry's decision, so the SP is free to go about its business once more - and in the meantime the tide has turned with the Hungarian Guard having been banned in Hungary. These events were followed by the protest in eastern Slovakia, where an inflammatory talk was given by Marián Kotleba, the SP's spiritual leader, in which he announced his intention to form a party that represents what he called the real interests of dissatisfied citizens. At the same time, Mr Kotleba chastised Mr Slota, who he said stands up to the Hungarians, true enough, but does nothing ‘when something happens to a white Slovak'. He added that if the state did nothing to stop Gypsy crime they would organise another demonstration.

The idea of forming a new party and the fact that a political force is rearing its head to the right of Mr Slota's SNS may even throw the Slovak ruling coalition into disorder. It seems that Mr Slota reserves the right to represent the entirety of Slovak radicalism. However, he would only be able to pass the SP on the right, and this may be too much even for Mr Fico's people. The socialist PM would not be able to defend his coalition partner on the international stage, though he still can for the time being - since the actions taken by the rubber truncheon-wielding police in eastern Slovakia were actually well received in certain quarters. Among the first to praise the operation was the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which seeks out Nazi war criminals. It announced that the government and the police force under their direction had taken tough action against the extremists. It is this sort of praise that is keeping the SNS safe for now, though at a price and despite the fact that Mr Slota places a premium on anti-Semitism and xenophobia. In one speech, for example, he announced, ‘If you aid and abet in the secret plans of the Jews and the Hungarians to rule the world, then a curse be upon you!'

In order to put a stop to the political disorder caused by the anti-Gypsy protest and to maintain their anti-Hungarian rhetoric, the Slovak government have launched a counter-offensive and organised a Roma demonstration in front of the Hungarian embassy in Bratislava (Pozsony). The Slovak Roma Initiative (RIS) has given its name to the event, where participants protested against the anti-Roma attacks in Hungary. However, the gathering consisted of no more than eight demonstrators. Little wonder, when antipathy toward the Roma remains extremely strong in Slovakia even at the highest levels.

For example, former PM Vladimír Mečiar once declared that Roma reproduction had to be dealt with ‘because, if we don't do something, in 20-30 years they will be the ones dealing with our reproduction' - and this while he was still in office. His announcement was followed by action. It turned out that Gypsy women who had given birth in hospitals in the eastern Slovakian towns of Kežmarok (Késmárk) and Košice (Kassa) were being sterilised without their knowledge and against their will. The scandal was uncovered in 2003 and civil rights activists succeeded in producing evidence in four cases. The four Roma women turned to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg for compensation and the court even ruled this spring to award them damages of 3500 euros each. More recently, former interior minister Vladimír Palko caused tempers to flare when he declared that statistics should be kept on crimes committed by Gypsies in Slovakia.

NGOs have repeatedly pointed out that the Slovak government's Commissioner on Roma Affairs, overseen by deputy PM Dušan Čaplovič, is unwilling to handle the minority problem, as a consequence of which local governments receive no central funding to promote integration. Incidentally, it was Mr Čaplovič who first suggested that the neo-Nazi demonstration in Šarišské Michal'any (Szentmihályfalva) might have been instigated from abroad.

Interestingly, the day after the demonstration, Mr Fico called on a similarly extremist cultural organisation known as Matica Slovenská to organise even more events in heavily Hungarian-populated southern Slovakia. Such occasions regularly bring in SP guardists, who have held more than one of their own anti-Hungarian demonstrations.


Brothers on the march

The Slovak Togetherness (Slovenská Pospolitost' or SP) organisation has been in existence since 2003, in theory, as a civilian unit. The group is permeated with nostalgia for a Fascist Slovak puppet state during the Second World War headed by a man named Jozef Tiso. This is clear from its uniform and its operations. The black shirt its members wear is the same as that worn by the Hlinka Guard under that regime. Its coat-of-arms with the white double cross also alludes to that era. And its publications are full of anti-Semitic, anti-Western and anti-Hungarian language, while members regularly lay wreaths on the graves of the leaders of Slovakia's wartime state and hold torch-lit marches on its anniversaries.